iced nothing, and received
education, often for the first time in their lives.

But Rickie turned to none of these friends, for just then he loved his
rooms better than any person. They were all he really possessed in the
world, the only place he could call his own. Over the door was his name,
and through the paint, like a grey ghost, he could still read the name
of his predecessor. With a sigh of joy he entered the perishable home
that was his for a couple of years. There was a beautiful fire, and
the kettle boiled at once. He made tea on the hearth-rug and ate the
biscuits which Mrs. Aberdeen had brought for him up from Anderson's.
"Gentlemen," she said, "must learn to give and take." He sighed again
and again, like one who had escaped from danger. With his head on the
fender and all his limbs relaxed, he felt almost as safe as he felt once
when his mother killed a ghost in the passage by carrying him through
it in her arms. There was no ghost now; he was frightened at reality; he
was frightened at the splendours and horrors of the world.

A letter from Miss Pembroke was on the table. He did not hurry to open
it, for she, and all that she did, was overwhelming. She wrote like
the Sibyl; her sorrowful face moved over the stars and shattered their
harmonies; last night he saw her with the eyes of Blake, a virgin widow,
tall, veiled, consecrated, with her hands stretched out against an
everlasting wind. Why should she write? Her letters were not for the
likes of him, nor to be read in rooms like his.

"We are not leaving Sawston," she wrote. "I saw how selfish it was of
me to risk spoiling Herbert's career. I shall get used to any place.
Now that he is gone, nothing of that sort can matter. Every one has been
most kind, but you have comforted me most, though you did not mean to. I
cannot think how you did it, or understood so much. I still think of you
as a little boy with a lame leg,--I know you will let me say this,--and
yet when it came to the point you knew more than people who have been
all their lives with sorrow and death."

Rickie burnt this letter, which he ought not to have done, for it was
one of the few tributes Miss Pembroke ever paid to imagination. But
he felt that it did not belong to him: words so sincere should be for
Gerald alone. The smoke rushed up the chimney, and he indulged in a
vision. He saw it reach the outer air and beat against the low ceiling
of clouds. The clouds were too strong for it;