ome, and he will be content."

What did she mean? What had she, the living Philippa Harford, to do
with Francis Heathcote? a man of whose very existence she had been
ignorant, known nothing, until yesterday--nothing.

And if clear reason asserted itself in his shadowed mind, as seemed
possible, how could the truth be explained to him?

She walked on again overwhelmed by the difficulty of her position.
Unthinkingly--unwittingly--she had, in the pitying impulse of the
moment, drawn a fellow-soul back to earth and life. If she had not
been there he must have died--so much was certain; and yet----

So engrossed had she been in her thoughts that she had paid no heed to
the road along which she passed, but now, as she lifted her eyes and
gazed round her, this way and that, as if seeking some solution of the
problem that confronted her, she found that she had reached the moor.

Before her stretched a wide expanse of earth and sky, lit into
splendour by the rays of the sun which was sinking, a ball of fire,
into a sea of flame. So calm was the distant water that its unruffled
surface mirrored the glory of the sky above it in wonderful tones of
scarlet and orange and palest rose. The moor itself, brilliant with
bell heather, seemed a magnificent robe clothing the world in regal
purple; while across it, winding like a ribbon laid lightly over its
richness, ran the road--further and further into the distance until it
vanished from sight at the meeting-place of land and water. Philippa
gazed entranced--her perplexities forgotten--her whole being
stirred--uplifted by the beauty of the scene.

Even as she looked the vision changed. The sun dropped below the
horizon, throwing, as it fell, great shafts of light like gleaming
spears, up across the splendour to the azure overhead--spears which
glittered for a moment, flashing a signal to herald the approach of the
dusk which on the instant, as if in response to a command, threw a
mysterious veil over the pageant of departing day.

No sound broke the stillness--the very earth was hushed.

Philippa gave a little shiver. It was as if with the waning of the
glory something had passed from her spirit, leaving her strangely cold
and small--an atom in an immeasurable loneliness.

Instinctively she turned to seek human companionship, as a child might
turn to seek its mother's hand in a moment of awe. She searched in
vain and could see no living thing, but presently she distingu