came up in the
sunshine to murmur that it was day.

* * * * *

Maurice Dale was puzzled. He noticed a change in Lily so marked that
even his self-centred nature could not fail to observe it. This girl,
whom he had thought pretty, fanciful, tenderhearted and gently
sympathetic, who had attracted his confession by her quick and feminine
receptiveness, now seemed developed into a woman of strength and
purpose, full of calm and of dignity. Her shining eyes were more
steadfast than of old, her manner was less changeful, less enthusiastic,
but more reliant. Brayfield wondered what had come to Miss Alston.
Maurice wondered too, dating the transformation accurately from the
night when he unburdened his soul in search of the help, which, after
all, no human being could give to him. It was strange, he thought, that
a man's terror, a man's weakness, should endow a weak girl with
confidence and with power. It was too strange, and he laughed at himself
for supposing that he had anything to do with the new manifestation of
Lily's nature. Nevertheless she began to attract him more than he had
believed possible. The nightmare in which his life was encircled grew
less real when he was with her. There was virtue in her that went out to
him. He came to desire always to be with her and yet he could not say to
himself that he loved her with the passion of man for woman. Rather was
the desire that he felt for her like that of a criminal towards a place
of refuge, of a coward towards an asylum of safety. Sometimes he longed
that she might share his trouble, selfishly longed that in her ears
might ring the cry of pain that tormented his.

One day, when they were together on a down that overlooked the sea, he
told her this.

"I wish it too," she answered softly.

"You are all unselfishness, as I am all selfishness," he said,
condemning himself, and nearer to loving her than ever before.

The sails went by along the wintry sea, and the short afternoon faded
quickly into a twilight that was cold in its beauty like a pale primrose
in frost. They were descending slowly towards the little town that lay
beneath them in the shadows.

"I have no voice to trouble my life,--no dead voice, that is," Lily
said.

"No dead voice?" Maurice asked. "And the living?"

"Oh, in most lives there is some one voice that means almost too much,"
Lily answered slowly.

Maurice stopped.

"Whose voice means so much to you?" h