Berkshire uplands and the far Oxford plain, and lay in gold and purple
on the falling woods and the green stretches of the park. The distant
edges of hill were extraordinarily luminous and clear, and Aldous,
looking into the west with the eye of one to whom every spot and line
were familiar landmarks, could almost fancy he saw beyond the invisible
river, the hill, the "lovely tree against the western sky," which keep
for ever the memory of one with whose destiny it had often seemed to him
that Hallin's had something in common. To him, as to Thyrsis, the same
early joy, the same "happy quest," the same "fugitive and gracious
light" for guide and beacon, that--

does not come with houses or with gold,
With place, with honour and a flattering crew;

and to him, too, the same tasked pipe and tired throat, the same
struggle with the "life of men unblest," the same impatient tryst with
death.

The lovely lines ran dirge-like in his head, as he sat, sunk in grief,
beside his friend. Hallin did not speak; but his eye took note of every
change of light, of every darkening tone, as the quiet English scene
with its villages, churches, and woods, withdrew itself plane by plane
into the evening haze. His soul followed the quiet deer, the homing
birds, loosening itself gently the while from pain and from desire,
saying farewell to country, to the poor, to the work left undone, and
the hopes unrealised--to everything except to love.

It had just struck six when he bent forward to the window beneath which
ran the wide front terrace.

"That was her step!" he said, while his face lit up, "will you bring her
here?"

* * * * *

Marcella rang the bell at the Court with a fast beating heart. The old
butler who came gave what her shrinking sense thought a forbidding
answer to her shy greeting of him, and led her first into the
drawing-room. A small figure in deep black rose from a distant chair and
came forward stiffly. Marcella found herself shaking hands with Miss
Raeburn.

"Will you sit and rest a little before you go upstairs?" said that lady
with careful politeness, "or shall I send word at once? He is hardly
worse--but as ill as he can be."

"I am not the least tired," said Marcella, and Miss Raeburn rang.

"Tell his lordship, please, that Miss Boyce is here."

The title jarred and hurt Marcella's ear. But she had scarcely time to
catch it before Aldous entered, a little bent, as it seem