ever between the strong hopes she felt pulsing through
him, and his air of fragility and exhaustion, seemed to melt the heart
within her, and make her whole being, she hardly knew why, one Sensitive
dread. She sat beside him, her head laid against his shoulder, oppressed
by a strange and desolate sense of her comparatively small share in this
ardent life. In spite of his tenderness and devotion, she felt often as
though he were no longer hers--as though a craving, hungry world, whose
needs were all dark and unintelligible to her, were asking him from her,
claiming to use as roughly and prodigally as it pleased the quick mind
and delicate frame.

As to the schemes developing round him, she could not take them in,
whether for protest or sympathy. She could think only of where to go,
what doctor to consult, how she could persuade him to stay away long
enough.

There was little surprise in Elgood Street when Elsmere announced that
he must go off for a while. He so announced it that everybody who
heard him understood that his temporary withdrawal was to be the mere
preparation for a great effort--the vigil before the tourney; and the
eager friendliness with which he was met sent him off in good heart.

Three or four days later, he, Catherine, and Mary were at Petites
Dalles, a little place on the Norman coast, near Fecamp, with which he
had first made acquaintance years before, when he was at Oxford.

Here all that in London had been oppressive in the August heat suffered
'a sea change,' and became so much matter for physical delight. It
was fiercely hot indeed. Every morning, between five and six o'clock,
Catherine would stand by the little white-veiled window, in the dewy
silence, to watch the eastern shadows spreading sharply already into a
blazing world of sun, and see the tall poplar just outside shooting into
a quivering, changeless depth of blue. Then, as early as possible, they
would sally forth before the glare became unbearable. The first event of
the day was always Mary's bathe, which gradually became a spectacle for
the whole beach, so ingenious were the blandishments of the father who
wooed her into the warm sandy shallows, and so beguiling the glee and
pluck of the two-year-old English _bebe_. By eleven the heat out of
doors grew intolerable, and they would stroll back--father and mother,
and trailing child--past the hotels on the _plage_, along the irregular
village lane, to the little house where they ha