e mention of Laura's name, the recollection of
that kiss at the gate last night sprang up from some deep place within
Caroline's consciousness and overwhelmed everything else. She could
not go to Laura's door and perhaps be obliged to answer kind words and
pleasant looks; she could not do it. "I'm sorry, Miss Ethel," she
muttered, bending over the washing-bowl, "but there's not time."

Miss Ethel glanced at the clock and saw that there was time; but she
could not insist, and so thought it more dignified to go away without
making any remark. Still she felt irritated to an unreasonable degree,
for her disturbed night had left her tired and nervous.

A few minutes later Caroline went out. There had been a change in the
wind, which now blew lustily from the north-east, and the sun was
shining. As she came down the street leading to the promenade, the
surface of her mind responded to the pricking liveliness of the salt
air and the sight of the open sea in front of her. A heavy rain
towards dawn had washed down mud from the cliffs which the high tide
had carried away, so now the water was a milky dun-colour, scattered
with millions of opal lights, answering more closely just then to the
thought of a jewelled sea than even the sparkling sapphire
Mediterranean.

A middle-aged visitor who had passed constantly in and out through the
barrier and knew Caroline by sight, gave her a sprightly "Good morning"
as he went through. "Most invigorating! Most invigorating!"

"Yes. Makes you feel as if you could jump over the moon, doesn't it?"
said Caroline gaily--that surface mind responding to his brisk jollity.

"Ha! Ha! So long as you haven't a liver to weigh you down," jested
the rosy-faced gentleman. Then he stepped away down the promenade,
well pleased with himself and his surroundings, and feeling that he was
not such an old dog yet, so long as he could enjoy a joke with a girl
on the promenade.

Caroline looked after him with a smile which gradually faded from her
lips as the slight stimulation from without ceased to act. For beneath
it all there was something inside, deep down within her, which was not
to be touched by the influences of sea air or sunshine--something that
watched anxiously and doggedly for one thing and would heed no other.

But the people came and went--came and went--until her knee ached with
the clutch and her whole being with watching. . . . And still the one
man she was looking for never