her, with her great big eyes--oh no, they'd be
talking, of course, about the dance. But suppose Rachel was going away
in a day or two, suppose this was the end of her visit, and her
father had arrived in one of the steamers anchored in the bay,--it was
intolerable to know so little. Therefore he exclaimed, "How d'you know
what you feel, Hirst?" to stop himself from thinking.

But Hirst did not help him, and the other people with their aimless
movements and their unknown lives were disturbing, so that he longed for
the empty darkness. The first thing he looked for when he stepped out
of the hall door was the light of the Ambroses' villa. When he had
definitely decided that a certain light apart from the others higher up
the hill was their light, he was considerably reassured. There seemed
to be at once a little stability in all this incoherence. Without any
definite plan in his head, he took the turning to the right and walked
through the town and came to the wall by the meeting of the roads, where
he stopped. The booming of the sea was audible. The dark-blue mass of
the mountains rose against the paler blue of the sky. There was no moon,
but myriads of stars, and lights were anchored up and down in the dark
waves of earth all round him. He had meant to go back, but the single
light of the Ambroses' villa had now become three separate lights, and
he was tempted to go on. He might as well make sure that Rachel was
still there. Walking fast, he soon stood by the iron gate of their
garden, and pushed it open; the outline of the house suddenly appeared
sharply before his eyes, and the thin column of the verandah cutting
across the palely lit gravel of the terrace. He hesitated. At the back
of the house some one was rattling cans. He approached the front; the
light on the terrace showed him that the sitting-rooms were on that
side. He stood as near the light as he could by the corner of the house,
the leaves of a creeper brushing his face. After a moment he could hear
a voice. The voice went on steadily; it was not talking, but from the
continuity of the sound it was a voice reading aloud. He crept a little
closer; he crumpled the leaves together so as to stop their rustling
about his ears. It might be Rachel's voice. He left the shadow and
stepped into the radius of the light, and then heard a sentence spoken
quite distinctly.

"And there we lived from the year 1860 to 1895, the happiest years of
my parents' lives, and ther