d ran, and thoroughly enjoyed herself. At one spot she
came at length to a pause, having lost sight of her husband, fretting
that she could not find him. Her eye discovered him at length, however,
and just as she spoke her satisfaction she was surprised by a laugh
from Thyrza--a real laugh, sweet and clear as it used to be.

'What is it?' she asked in wonder.

'Oh, look! Do look!'

Just before them, on the ice, a little troop of ducks was going by,
fowl dispossessed of their wonted swimming-ground by the all-hardening
frost. Of every two steps the waddlers took, one was a hopeless slip,
and the spectacle presented by the unhappy birds in their effort to get
along at a good round pace was ludicrous beyond resistance. They
sprawled and fell, they staggered up again with indignant wagging of
head and tail, they rushed forward only to slip more desperately; now
one leg failed them, now the other, now both at once. And all the time
they kept up a cackle of annoyance; they looked about them with foolish
eyes of amazement and indignation; they wondered, doubtless, what the
world was coming to, when an honest duck's piece of water was suddenly
stolen from him, and he was subjected to insult on the top of injury.

Thyrza gazed at them, and the longer she gazed the more merrily she
laughed.

'Poor ducks! I never saw anything so ridiculous. There, look! The one
with the neck all bright colours! He'll be down again; there, I said he
would! Why _will_ they try to go so quickly? They wouldn't stumble half
so much if they walked gently.'

Thyrza had thought that nothing in the world could move her to
unfeigned laughter. Yet as often as she thought of the ducks it was
with revival of mirth. She laughed at them long after, alone in her
room.

It was as bright a day on the morrow, and still she knew that lightness
of heart, that freedom of the breath which is physical happiness. Had
she by the mere act of redeeming her faith to Gilbert brought upon
herself this reward? It was so strangely easy to keep dark thoughts at
a distance. She had not lain awake in the night, for her a wonderful
experience. Could it last?

There was a letter this morning from Gilbert. She did not open it at
once, for she knew that there would be more pain than content in
reading it. Yet, when she had read it, she found that it was not out of
harmony with her mood. He wrote because he could say things in this
silent way which would not come to his lips so