l looked
like a child's toy, and the quiet that brooded everywhere was the quiet
of stagnation. An ancient dog was limping down the road--the only living
thing in sight.

The girl turned from the window with a heavy sigh. She was conscious of
a great emptiness, of a craving too intense to be silenced, a feverish
longing that had in it the elements of a bitter despair. She had fled
from captivity to the desert. But she had not found relief. She had
escaped indeed. But she was like to perish of starvation in the
wilderness.

She slept that night from sheer weariness, but, waking in the early
morning, she lay for hours, listening to the cheery pipings of the
birds, and wondering what she should do with her life. For there was no
one belonging to her in a truly intimate sense. She had no near ties.
There was no one who really wanted her, except--The burning colour
rushed up to her temples. No; even he did not want her now. And again
the loneliness and the emptiness seemed more than she could bear.

Dressing, she told herself suddenly and passionately that her
home-coming had been a miserable farce, a sham, and a delusion. And she
called bitterly to mind words that she had once either read or heard:
"Where the heart is, there is home."

The scent of honeysuckle and stale tobacco was mingled with that of
fried bacon as she opened the door of the inn-parlour. It rushed out to
greet her in a nauseating wave, and she nearly shut the door again in
disgust. But the sight of an immense bunch of roses waiting for her on
the table checked the impulse. She went forward into the room and picked
it up, burying her face in its fragrance.

There was a tiny strip of paper twisted about one of the stalks which
she did not at first perceive. When she did, she unfolded it, wondering.
Four words met her eyes, written in minute characters, and it was as if
a meteor had flamed suddenly across her sky. They were words that,
curiously, had never ceased to ring in her brain since the moment she
had first read them: "With love from Tots."

* * * * *

Fully five minutes passed before Ruth crossed the room to the
honeysuckle-draped window, the roses pressed against her thumping heart.
Outside, an ancient wooden bench that sagged dubiously in the middle
stood against a crumbling stone wall. It was a bench greatly favoured by
aged labourers in the summer evenings, but this morning it had but one
occupant--a loose-