g down that mast there."

"You know that I did not mean that," she said, reprovingly, "only
sometimes you make me--shall I confess it?--almost angry with you."

He took his pipe from his mouth and knocked out the ashes. As they fell
on the ground so he looked at them.

"All thought is wasted time," he declared, grimly, "all thought of the
past. The past is like those ashes; it is dead and finished."

She shook her head.

"Not always," she replied. "Sometimes the past comes to life again.
Sometimes the bravest of us quit the fight too soon."

He looked at her questioningly, almost fiercely. Her words, however,
seemed spoken without intent.

"So far as mine is concerned," he pronounced, "it is finished. There is
a memorial stone laid upon it, and no resurrection is possible."

"You cannot tell," she answered. "No one can tell."

He turned back to his work almost rudely, but she stayed by his side.

"Once," she remarked, reflectively, "I, too, went a little way into the
world. I was a school-teacher at Norwich. I was very fond of some one
there; we were engaged. Then my mother died and I had to come back to
look after father."

He nodded.

"Well?"

"We are a long way from Norwich," she continued, quietly. "Soon after I
left, the man whom I was fond of grew lonely. He found some one else."

"You have forgotten him?" Tavernake asked, quickly.

"I shall never forget him," she replied. "That part of life is finished,
but if ever my father can spare me, I shall go back to my work again.
Sometimes those work the best and accomplish the most who carry the
scars of a great wound."

She turned away to the house, and after that it seemed to him that she
avoided him for a time. At any rate, she made no further attempt to win
his confidence. Propinquity, however, was too much for both of them. He
was a lodger under her father's roof. It was scarcely possible for them
to keep apart. Saturdays and Sundays they walked sometimes for miles
across the frost-bound marshes, in the quickening atmosphere of the
darkening afternoons, when the red sun sank early behind the hills, and
the twilight grew shorter every day. They watched the sea-birds together
and saw the wild duck come down to the pools; felt the glow of exercise
burn their cheeks; felt, too, that common and nameless exultation
engendered by their loneliness in the solitude of these beautiful empty
places. In the evenings they often read together, for Nicholls, alt