tle wood that bounded the gardens,
and passed into the great, bare, grey aisle of the beech avenue.

In a past generation a wide drive had led through this avenue to the
house. It had been the south approach to Priesthope. But in these
impoverished days, the road, with its sweep of turf on either side, had
been neglected, and was now little more than a mossy cart-rut, with a
fallen tree across it.

The two sisters sat down on a crooked arm of the fallen tree.

It was a soft, tranquil afternoon, flooded with meek February sunshine.
Far away between the green-grey trunks of the trees, the sea glinted
like a silver ribbon. Everything was very still, with the stillness set
deep in peace of one who loves and awaits in awe love's next word. The
earth lay in the sunshine, and listened for the whisper of spring. Faint
birdnotes threaded the high windless spaces near the tree-tops.

"Look!" said Magdalen, "the first crocus."

What is there, what can there be in the first yellow crocus peering
against the brown earth, that can reach with instant healing, like a
child's "soft absolving touch," the inflamed, aching, unrest of the
spirit? It does not seek to comfort us. Then how does comfort reach
through with the crocus; as if the whole under-world were peace and joy,
and were breaking through the thin sod to enfold us?

Fay looked at the flame-pure, upturned face of the little forerunner,
absently at first, and then with growing absorption, until two large
tears slowly welled up into her eyes and blotted it out. She shivered,
and crept a little closer to her sister. She felt alienated from she
knew not what, dreadfully cold and alone in the sunshine, with her cheek
against her sister's shoulder. Though she did not realise it, something
long frost-bound in her mind was yielding, shifting, breaking up. The
first miserable shudder of the thaw was upon her.

She glanced up at Magdalen, who was looking into the heart of the
crocus, and a sudden anger seized her at the still rapture of her
sister's face. The contrast between her own gnawing misery and
Magdalen's serenity cut her like a knife. What right had Magdalen to be
so happy? Why should she have been exempted from all trouble? What had
she done that anguish could never reach her? Fay's love for Magdalen,
and at this time Magdalen was the only person for whom she had any
affection--had all the violent recoils, the mutinous anger, the sudden
desire to wound on the one side, a