es and all the mummery
that they signified?

Would he never wake up? Would he never realise her presence? Oh! then
he could care nothing about her. Probably he was thinking of the girl
he had pulled up a cliff in the Alps. But why did he come to this place
to think of _her_?

Isobel stood quite still there and waited in the shadow of a Georgian
tomb, till presently Godfrey did seem to grow aware that he was no
longer alone. Something or somebody had impinged upon his intelligence.
He began to look about him, though always in the wrong direction. Then,
convinced that he was the victim of fancy, he spoke aloud as he had a
bad habit of doing when by himself.

"It's very curious," he said, "but I could have sworn that Isobel was
here, as near me as when we parted. I suppose that is what comes of
thinking so much about her. Or do people leave something of themselves
behind in places where they have experienced emotion? If so, churches
ought to be very full of ghosts. I dare say that they are, only then no
one could know it except those who had shared the emotion, and
therefore they remain intangible. Still, I could have sworn that Isobel
was here. Indeed, I seem to feel her now, and I hope that the dream
will go on."

Listening there in the shadow, she heard, and flushed in her flesh and
rejoiced in her innermost being. So he had _not_ forgotten her, which
is the true and real infidelity that never can be forgiven, at any
rate, by a woman. So she was still something in his life, although he
had not answered her letter years ago.

Then she grew angry with herself. What did it matter to her what he
was, or thought, or did? It was absurd that she could be dependent
morally upon anyone, who must rely in life or death upon herself alone
and on the strong soul within her. She was wroth with Godfrey for
exciting such disturbance in--what was it--her spirit or her body?
Nonsense, she had no spirit. That was a phantasy. Therefore it must be
in her body which was her own particular property that should remain
uninfluenced by any other body.

So it came about that the first words she spoke to him were somewhat
rough in their texture. She stepped forward out of the shadow of the
Georgian tomb and confronted him with a defiant air, her head thrown
back, looking, to tell the truth, rather stately.

"I hoped that by this time you had given up talking to yourself,
Godfrey, which, as I always told you, is a bad habit. I did not hear