aps the time has not come yet," she said.

Suddenly he took her hands in his and pushed her a little way from him,
so that he could look clearly into her face.

"What do you mean? What can you mean?" he said. "Sometimes I think you
have some secret that you keep from me, some purpose that I know nothing
of. You look as if--as if you were waiting for something; were
expectant; I don't know--" he broke off, "After all what does it
matter? Only let us go from here. Let us get home. I hate that stretch
of moorland. At night it is full of bewailing and misery."

He shuddered although the warm spring sunshine was pouring in at the
window. Then he turned and left the room without another word. Lily
stood still for a moment, with her eyes turned in the direction of the
door. Her cheeks burned with a slight blush and her lips were half
opened.

"If he only knew what I am waiting for!" she murmured to herself. "Will
it ever come?"

She sank down on the broad, old-fashioned window seat, and leaned her
cheek against the leaded panes of glass. The bees were humming outside.
She listened to their music. It was dull and dreamy, heavy like a golden
noon in summer time. And then the white lids fell over her eyes, and the
hum of the bees faded from her ears, and she heard another music that
made her woman's heart leap up, she heard the first tiny murmur of a
new-born child.

It was sweeter than the hum of bees. It was sweeter than the soul the
lute gave up to the ears of Nature when Orpheus touched the strings. It
was so sweet that tears came stealing from under Lily's eyelids and
dropped down upon her clasped hands. She sat there motionless till the
twilight came over the moor, and Maurice entered, white and weary, to
ask impatiently of what she was dreaming.

As Maurice wished it, they returned the next day to Brayfield and
settled into the house that was to be their home. It stood on a low
cliff overlooking the sea; a broad green lawn, on which during the
season a band played and people promenaded, lay in front of it. Beyond,
the waves danced in the sunshine. The situation of the house was almost
absurdly cheerful, and the house itself was new and prettily furnished.
But the life into which Lily entered was strangely at variance with the
surroundings, strangely antagonistic to the brightness of the sea, the
sweetness of the air, the holiday gaiety that pervaded the little town
in the summer. For work did not abolish, did not e