ce of mind by seeing them together again.

The sunny season held. The river water was so low as to be unfishable,
but in the string of lakelets below Loughannilaun Radway landed half a
dozen sea-trout with Gabrielle, who knew the stones in every pool, as
ghillie. In the divine relaxation of their love-making they were not
inclined for strenuous exercise; but when evening fell, and the sky
cooled, they would wander abroad together by the lake and through the
woodlands or lie dreaming, side by side, in the deep heather.

During the days of Radway's visit, Jocelyn felt an obligation to appear
presentable, and every evening, when dinner was over, Radway would
smoke a cigar in his company, listening to his stories of old Galway
days and sportsmen long since dead. As Jocelyn's memory for immediate
things had faded he seemed to remember his early days more clearly,
and, like many Irishmen, he was an amusing talker. Gabrielle would sit
on a low stool between them in the white dress that Radway loved. It
made the solitude for which they were both waiting seem more precious
to see her thus at a distance, pale and fragile and miraculous against
the sombre background of the Roscarna oak. Then Jocelyn would begin to
yawn, and fidget for the nightcap of hot whiskey that Biddy prepared
for him, and at last discreetly vanish. And so the most precious of
their moments began.

Of these one can say nothing. Naturally enough, in later years, when
she made Mrs. Payne her confidante, Gabrielle did not speak of them.
And even if she had done so Mrs. Payne was too surely a woman of
feeling ever to have betrayed her confidence. Under that wasting moon
they loved, and I know nothing, but that it must have been strange for
the empty shell of Roscarna, that tragic theatre, to reawaken to such a
vivid and youthful passion. The world was theirs, and nobody heeded
them, unless it were Biddy Joyce, a creature whose whole life was
coloured by shadowy premonitions.

Gabrielle could not bear that he should leave her, but Radway's plans
for the immediate future had been made without reckoning for anything
as momentous as this love-affair. He was pledged, in four days, to
visit an aunt in North Wales, and though he could not undertake to
disappoint the old lady, he consoled Gabrielle by showing her how short
and how convenient the passage to Holyhead was. To her, England seemed
a country as remote as Canada, but he promised her that he would