ad not attended the service here for a considerable time, and she
now seemed to have a reason for her choice of seat. From the gallery
window the tomb of her son was plainly visible--standing as the nearest
object in a prospect which was closed outwardly by the changeless
horizon of the sea.

The streaming rays, too, flooded her face, now bent towards Elfride with
a hard and bitter expression that the solemnity of the place raised to
a tragic dignity it did not intrinsically possess. The girl resumed her
normal attitude with an added disquiet.

Elfride's emotion was cumulative, and after a while would assert itself
on a sudden. A slight touch was enough to set it free--a poem, a sunset,
a cunningly contrived chord of music, a vague imagining, being the usual
accidents of its exhibition. The longing for Knight's respect, which
was leading up to an incipient yearning for his love, made the present
conjuncture a sufficient one. Whilst kneeling down previous to leaving,
when the sunny streaks had gone upward to the roof, and the lower
part of the church was in soft shadow, she could not help thinking
of Coleridge's morbid poem 'The Three Graves,' and shuddering as she
wondered if Mrs. Jethway were cursing her, she wept as if her heart
would break.

They came out of church just as the sun went down, leaving the landscape
like a platform from which an eloquent speaker has retired, and nothing
remains for the audience to do but to rise and go home. Mr. and Mrs.
Swancourt went off in the carriage, Knight and Elfride preferring to
walk, as the skilful old matchmaker had imagined. They descended the
hill together.

'I liked your reading, Mr. Knight,' Elfride presently found herself
saying. 'You read better than papa.'

'I will praise anybody that will praise me. You played excellently, Miss
Swancourt, and very correctly.'

'Correctly--yes.'

'It must be a great pleasure to you to take an active part in the
service.'

'I want to be able to play with more feeling. But I have not a good
selection of music, sacred or secular. I wish I had a nice little
music-library--well chosen, and that the only new pieces sent me were
those of genuine merit.'

'I am glad to hear such a wish from you. It is extraordinary how many
women have no honest love of music as an end and not as a means, even
leaving out those who have nothing in them. They mostly like it for its
accessories. I have never met a woman who loves music as do ten or a