still
swept her in recurrent storms--indeed, tranquil and happy; for through
the troubled glimmer of departing reason, her eyes were already opening
in the calm, unearthly dawn of second childhood.

Pain, sadness, the desolate awakening to dishonour had been forgotten;
to her, the dead now lived; to her, the living who had been children
with her were children again, and she a child among them. Outside of
that dead garden of the past, peopled by laughing phantoms of her youth,
but one single extraneous memory persisted--the memory of
Selwyn--curiously twisted and readjusted to the comprehension of a
child's mind--vague at times, at times wistfully elusive and
incoherent--but it remained always a memory, and always a happy one.

He was obliged to go to her every three or four days. In the interim she
seemed quite satisfied and happy, busy with the simple and pretty things
she now cared for; but toward the third day of his absence she usually
became restless, asking for him, and why he did not come. And then they
telegraphed him, and he left everything and went, white-faced, stern of
lip, to endure the most dreadful ordeal a man may face--to force the
smile to his lips and gaiety into the shrinking soul of him, and sit
with her in the pretty, sunny room, listening to her prattle, answering
the childish questions, watching her, seated in her rocking-chair,
singing contentedly to herself, and playing with her dolls and
ribbons--dressing them, undressing, mending, arranging--until the heart
within him quivered under the misery of it, and he turned to the
curtained window, hands clinching convulsively, and teeth set to force
back the strangling agony in his throat.

And the dreadful part of it all was that her appearance had remained
unchanged--unless, perhaps, she was prettier, lovelier of face and
figure than ever before; but in her beautiful dark eyes only the direct
intelligence of a child answered his gaze of inquiry; and her voice,
too, had become soft and hesitating, and the infantile falsetto sounded
in it at times, sweet, futile, immature.

* * * * *

Thinking of these things now, he leaned heavily forward, elbows on the
little table. And, suddenly unbidden, before his haunted eyes rose the
white portico of Silverside, and the greensward glimmered, drenched in
sunshine, and a slim figure in white stood there, arms bare, tennis-bat
swinging in one tanned little hand.

Voices were s