l's Hood Island."

Audrey's high, clear voice, as she chattered to Molly,
characteristically propounding half-a-dozen plans for the immediate
future, floated across to Sara where she stood waiting on the lowest
step, impatient to be gone. As though drawn by some invisible magnet,
her eyes encountered Garth's, and the swift colour rushed into her
cheeks, staining them scarlet.

His expression was enigmatical. The next moment he bent forward and
spoke, in a low voice that reached her ear alone.

"Much maligned place--where I tasted my one little bit of heaven!" Then,
after a pause, he added deliberately: "But a black sheep has no business
with heaven. He'd be turned away from the doors--and quite rightly, too!
That's why I shall never ask for admittance." He regarded her steadily
for a moment, then quietly averted his eyes.

And Sara realized that in those few words he had revoked--repudiating
all that he had claimed, all that he had given, the day before.

CHAPTER XIII

DISILLUSION

"Letters are unsatisfactory things at the best of times, and what we all
want is to have you with us again for a little while. I am sure you must
have had a surfeit of the simple life by this time, so come to us and be
luxurious and exotic in London for a change. Don't disappoint us, Sara!

"Yours ever affectionately,

"ELISABETH."

Sara, seated at the open window of her room, re-read the last paragraph
of the letter which the morning's post had brought her, and then let it
fall again on to her lap, whilst she stared with sombre eyes across the
bay to where the Monk's Cliff reared itself, stark and menacing, against
the sky.

April had slipped into May, and the blue waters of the Channel flickered
with a myriad dancing points of light reflected from an unclouded sun.
The trees had clothed themselves anew in pale young green, and the whole
atmosphere was redolent of spring--spring as she reaches her maturity
before she steps aside to let the summer in.

Sara frowned a little. She was out of tune with the harmony of things.
You need happiness in your heart to be at one with the eager pulsing
of new life, the reaching out towards fulfillment that is the essential
quality of spring. Whereas Sara's heart was empty of happiness and
hopes, and of all the joyous beginnings that are the glorious appanage
of youth. There could be no beginnings for her, because she had already
reached the end--reached it with such a stupefying suddenn