tood apart, her hands upon
her hips, looking towards the bridge and its solitary occupant. The
tan-and-white, spotted dog ran to and fro chasing field-mice and
yapped. The baby children staggered after it, uttering excited
squeakings and cries. The lower cloud had parted in the west,
disclosing an upper stratum of pale gold, which widened upward and
outward as the minutes passed. Save immediately below, in the shadow of
the bridge, this found reflection in the water, overlaying it as with
the blond of the stubble and warmer tones of the sheaves. Honoria sat
down sideways on the coping of the parapet. She watched the moor-hens,
dark of plumage, a splash of fiery orange on their jaunty, little
heads, swim out with restless, jerky motion from the edge of the
reed-beds and break up the shining surface with diverging lines of
rippling, brown shadow. In the shade cast by the bridge, trout rose at
the dancing gnats and flies. She could see them rush upward through the
brown water. Sometimes they leapt clear of it, exposing their silver
bellies, pink-spotted sides, and the olive-green of their backs. They
dropped again with a flop, and rings circled outward from the place of
their disappearing.

All this Honoria saw, but dreamily, pensively. She realised, as never
before, that, much as she might love this place and the life of it, she
was a guest only, a pilgrim and sojourner. The completeness of her own
independence ceased to please.--"Me this unchartered freedom tires." As
she quoted the line, Honoria smiled. These were, indeed, new aspects of
herself! Where would they carry her, both in thought and in action? It
was a little alarming to contemplate that. And then her pensiveness
increased, a strange nostalgia taking her--amounting almost to physical
pain--for that same but-half-disclosed glory, that same new and very
exquisite fulness of life, apprehension of which had lately been
vouchsafed to her. If she could remain very still and undisturbed, if
she could empty her consciousness of all else, bend her whole will to
an act at once of determination and of reception, perhaps, it would be
given her clearly to see and understand. The idealist, the mystic, were
very present in Honoria just then. She fixed her eyes upon the shining
surface of the water. A conviction grew upon her that, could she
maintain a certain mental and emotional equilibrium, something of
permanent and very vital importance must take place.

Suddenly she