to my
little old room. The furniture and books and pictures seemed to me to
reproach me with having deserted them; but, oh dear, what a fantastic,
foolish, anxious little wretch I was, with all my plans for uplifting
everyone! You don't know, dearest, you can't know, out of what a
stagnant little pool you fished me up!"

"And yet _I_ feel," said Howard, "as if it was you who had saved me
from a sort of death--what a charming picture! two people who can't
swim saving each other from drowning."

"Well, that's the way that things are done!" said Maud decisively.

They left the garden, and betook themselves to the pool; the waters
welled up, green and cold, from the depth, and hurried away down their
bare channel.

"This is the scene of my life," said Howard; "I WILL be sentimental
about this! This is where my ghost will walk, if anywhere; good
heavens, to think that it was not three years ago that I came here
first, and thought in a solemn way that it was going to have a strange
significance for me. 'Significance,' that is the mischief! But it is
all very well, now that every minute is full of happiness, to laugh at
the old fears--they were very real at the time,--'the old wind, in the
old anger'--one can't sit and dream, though it's pleasant, it's
pleasant."

"It was the only time in my life," said Maud, "when I was ever brave!
Why isn't one braver? It is agreeable at the time, and it is almost
overpaid!"

"It is like what a doctor told me once," said Howard, "that he had
never in his life seen a patient go to the operating table other than
calm and brave. Face to face with things one is all right; and yet one
never learns not to waste time in dreading them."

They went on in silence up the valley, Maud walking beside him with all
her old lightness. Howard thought he had never seen anything more
beautiful. They were out of the wind now, but could hear it hiss in the
grasses above them.

"What about Cambridge?" said Maud. "I think it will be rather fun. I
haven't wanted to go; but do you know, if someone came to me and said I
might just unpack everything, I should be dreadfully disappointed!"

"I believe I should be too," said Howard. "My only fear is that I shall
not be interested--I shall be always wanting to get back to you--and
yet how inexplicable that used to seem to me, that Dons who married
should really prefer to steal back home, instead of living the free and
joyous life of the sympathetic and bachelo