verything in her life seemed to have been taken away from her.
She lay there for a long time, and when she moved at last her head was
so heavy that she took the pins from her hair to relieve herself of its
weight. But still the pain weighed on her forehead, which burned on her
cold fingers when she pressed them over her eyes, trying to think and
find some gleam of hope among her despairing thoughts. And then she
remembered that one thing at least was left her--her shell. During his
illness she had never carried it to the millstones. It was as though
his being there had been the only answer to her daily dreams, an answer
that had failed them all the time. But now in spite of him she would
try to find the old answers again. So she went once more to the
millstones with her shell. And when she got there she held it so
tightly to her heart that it marked her skin.

And the millstones had nothing to say. For the first time they refused
to grind her corn.

Then Helen knew that she really had nothing left, and that the
home-coming of the man had robbed her of her boy and of the child she
had been. Nothing was left but the man and woman who had lost their
youth. And the man had nothing to give the woman. Nothing but gratitude
and disillusion. And now a still bitterer thought came to her--the
thought that the boy had had nothing to give the girl. For twenty years
it had been the girl's illusion. The storms in her heart broke out. She
put her face in her hands and wept like wild rain on the sea. She wept
so violently that between her passion and the speechless grinding of
the stones she did not hear him coming. She only knew he was there when
he put his arm round her.

"What is it, you silly thing?" said Peter.

She looked up at him through her hair that fell like a girl's in soft
masses on either side of her face. There was a change in him, but she
didn't know then what it was. He had got into his clothes and made
himself kempt. His beard was no longer rough, though his hair was still
unruly across his forehead, and under it his gray-green eyes looked,
half-anxious, half-smiling, into hers. His face was rather pale, and he
was a little unsteady in his weakness. But the look in his eyes was the
only thing she saw. It unlocked her speech at last.

"Oh, why did you come back?" she cried. "Why did you come back? If you
had never come I should have kept my dream to the end of my life. But
now even when you go I shall never get it