ferent place when you are near?"

She looked into his face a little wistfully. Then she let her hand
rest on his.

"You are so steadfast," she said--"so strong, and so certain of
yourself. Forgive me if I seem a little restless. One loses one's
balance sometimes, thinking and thinking and wondering."

They were at the top of the hill, and the pony paused. Rochester
stepped out.

"Come," he said, "I will take you for a little walk. We will leave
Peter here."

He unlocked a gate with a key which he took from his pocket, and hand
in hand they ascended a steep path which led between a grove of pine
trees. Out once more into the open, they crossed a patch of green turf
and came to another gate, set in a stone wall. This also Rochester
opened. A few more yards, and they climbed up to the masses of tumbled
rock which lay about on the summit of the hill.

"Turn round," he said. "You have seen this view many a time in the
daylight. You can see it now fading away into nothingness."

They stood hand in hand, looking downwards. Mists rose from along the
side of the river, and stood about in the valleys. The lights began to
twinkle here and there. Afar off, like some nursery toy, they saw a
train, with its line of white smoke, go stealing across the shadowy
landscape.

Rochester's face darkened with a sudden reminiscence.

"It was here," he said, "that I first saw your friend the charlatan."

"My friend?" she murmured.

"More yours than mine, at any rate," he answered. "He sat with his
back against that rock, and if ever hunger was written into a boy's
face, it was there in his pale cheeks, burning in his eyes."

"He was very poor, then?" she asked.

"He was very poor," Rochester answered, "but it was not hunger for
food, it was hunger for life that one saw there. He had been down at
the Convalescent Home, recovering from some illness, and the next day
he was going back to his work--work which he hated, which made him
part of a machine. You know how many millions there are who live and
die like that--who must always live and die like that. They are part
of the great system of the world, and nine-tenths of them are
content."

"You set him free," she murmured.

"I did," Rochester answered. "It was a mistake."

"You cannot tell," she said. "I know that you mistrust him. You are
very, very English, dear Henry, and you have so little sympathy with
those things which you do not understand--which do come, perhaps, a
l