trouble. She has lived under dominion so long that she has forgotten
that there are people who have no reason for fear. Her old life seems
nothing but a dream. The first thing I must teach her is that I am to be
trusted not to do futile things, and that she need neither be afraid of
nor for me."

After writing these sentences she found herself leaving her desk and
walking up and down the room to relieve herself. She could not sit
still, because suddenly the blood ran fast and hot through her veins.
She put her hands against her cheeks and laughed a little, low laugh.

"I feel violent," she said. "I feel violent and I must get over it. This
is rage. Rage is worth nothing."

It was rage--the rage of splendid hot blood which surged in answer to
leaping hot thoughts. There would have been a sort of luxury in giving
way to the sway of it. But the self-indulgence would have been no aid to
future action. Rage was worth nothing. She said it as the first Reuben
Vanderpoel might have said of a useless but glittering weapon. "This gun
is worth nothing," and cast it aside.

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE GARDENS

She came out upon the stone terrace again rather early in the morning.
She wanted to wander about in the first freshness of the day, which was
always an uplifting thing to her. She wanted to see the dew on the grass
and on the ragged flower borders and to hear the tender, broken fluting
of birds in the trees. One cuckoo was calling to another in the park,
and she stopped and listened intently. Until yesterday she had never
heard a cuckoo call, and its hollow mellowness gave her delight. It
meant the spring in England, and nowhere else.

There was space enough to ramble about in the gardens. Paths and beds
were alike overgrown with weeds, but some strong, early-blooming things
were fighting for life, refusing to be strangled. Against the beautiful
old red walls, over which age had stolen with a wonderful grey bloom,
venerable fruit trees were spread and nailed, and here and there showed
bloom, clumps of low-growing things sturdily advanced their yellowness
or whiteness, as if defying neglect. In one place a wall slanted and
threatened to fall, bearing its nectarine trees with it; in another
there was a gap so evidently not of to-day that the heap of its masonry
upon the border bed was already covered with greenery, and the roots of
the fruit tree it had supported had sent up strong, insistent shoots.

She passed down broa