h brand new red brick, such blue tiling,
such dreadful little porches.

Ruth drew the old condemned cottages, with the long lines of pollarded
marshy meadow, and distant bridge and mill in the background, but it was
a sketch she never cared to look at afterwards. She was constantly
drawing now. There was a vague restlessness in her at this time that
made her take refuge in the world of nature, where the mind can withdraw
itself from itself for a time into a stronghold where misgiving and
anxiety cannot corrupt, nor self break through and steal. In these days
she shut out self steadfastly, and fixed her eyes firmly on the future,
as she herself had made it with her own hands.

She had grown very grave of late. Dare's high spirits had the effect of
depressing her more than she would allow, even to herself. She liked
him. She told herself so every day, and it was a pleasure to her to see
him so happy. But when she had accepted him he was so diffident, so
quiet, so anxious, that she had not realized that he would return to his
previous happy self-confidence, his volubility, his gray hats--in fact,
his former gay self--directly his mind was at ease and he had got what
he wanted. She saw at once that the change was natural, but she found it
difficult to keep pace with, and the effort to do so was a constant
strain.

She had yet to learn that it is hard to live for those who live for
self. Between a nature which struggles, however feebly, towards a higher
life, and one whose sole object is gracefully and good-naturedly, but
persistently to enjoy itself, there is a great gulf fixed, of which
often neither are aware, until they attempt a close relationship with
each other, when the chasm reveals itself with appalling clearness to
the higher nature of the two.

Ruth was glad when a long-standing engagement to sing at a private
concert in one place, and sell modern knick-knacks in old English
costume at another, took her from Slumberleigh for a week. She looked
forward to the dreary dissipation in store for her with positive
gladness; and when the week had passed, and she was returning once more,
she wished the stations would not fly so quickly past, that the train
would not hurry itself so unnecessarily to bring her back to
Slumberleigh.

As the little local line passed Stoke Moreton station she looked out for
a moment, but leaned back hurriedly as she caught a glimpse of the
Danvers omnibus in the background, with its grea