,
vaguely, and he absent-mindedly followed his son, leaving Miriam Liston
sitting in the turf shelter, built like an embrasure in the dyke, and
Barebone standing a little distance from her, looking at her.

A silence fell upon them--the silence that follows the departure of a
third person when those who are left behind turn a new page. Miriam laid
her book upon her lap and looked across the river now slowly turning to
its ebb. She did not look at Barebone, but her eyes were conscious of
his proximity. Her attitude, like his, seemed to indicate the knowledge
that this moment had been inevitable from the first, and that there was
no desire on either part to avoid it or to hasten its advent.

"I had a haunting fear as we came up the river," he said at length,
quietly and with an odd courtesy of manner, "that you might have gone
away. That is the calamity always hanging over this quiet house."

He spoke with the ease of manner which always indicates a long
friendship, or a close camaraderie, resulting from common interests or a
common endeavour.

"Why should I go away?" she asked.

"On the other hand, why should you stay?"

"Because I fancy I am wanted," she replied, in the lighter tone which
he had used. "It is gratifying to one's vanity, you know, whether it be
true or not."

"Oh, it is true enough. One cannot imagine what they would do without
you."

He was watching Septimus Marvin as he spoke. Sep had joined him and was
walking gravely by his side toward the house. They were ill-assorted.

"But there is a limit even to self-sacrifice and--well, there is another
world open to you."

She gave a curt laugh as if he had touched a topic upon which they would
disagree.

"Oh--yes," he laughed. "I leave myself open to a tu quoque, I know.
There are other worlds open to me also, you would say."

He looked at her with his gay and easy smile; but she made no answer,
and her resolute lips closed together sharply. The subject had been
closed by some past conversation or incident which had left a memory.

"Who are those two men staying at 'The Black Sailor'", she asked,
changing the subject, or only turning into a by-way, perhaps. "You saw
them."

She seemed to take it for granted that he should have seen them, though
he had not appeared to look in their direction.

"Oh--yes. I saw them, but I do not know who they are. I came straight
here as soon as I could."

"One of them is a Frenchman," she said, taking no he