hael's grave smile, and heard the tranquil voice, "This
place is beautiful in autumn. Mind you come next when the sea lavender
is out."

The remembrance of that meeting cut sharper than the actual pain of it
at the moment. He had gone through with it with a sort of stolid
endurance, letting Michael see but a tithe of what he felt. But the
remembrance was anguish unalloyed. For a time he could neither speak nor
see.

A yellow butterfly that had waked too soon floated towards them on a
wavering trial trip. Close at hand a snowdrop drooped "its serious
head." The butterfly knew its own, and lit on the meek, nunlike flower,
opening and shutting its new wings in the pallid sunshine. It had
perhaps dreamed, as it lay in its chrysalis, "that life had been more
sweet." Was this chill sunshine that could not quicken his wings, was
this grim desert that held no goal for butterfly feet, was this one
snowdrop--_all_? Was this indeed the summer of his dreams, in the sure
and certain hope of which he had spun his cocoon, and laid him down in
faith?

Fay looked at it in anguish not less than Wentworth's, whose dimmed eyes
saw it not at all. She never watched a poised butterfly open and shut
its wings without thinking of Michael. The flight of a seagull across
the down cut her like a lash. He had been free once. He who so loved the
down, the sea, the floating cloud, had been free once.

When Wentworth had winked his steady grey eyes back to their normal
state, he looked furtively at Fay. She was weeping silently. He had seen
Fay in tears before, but never without emotion. With a somewhat halting
utterance he told her of certain small alleviations of Michael's lot.
The permission, urgently asked, had at last been granted that English
books might be sent him from time to time. The lonely, aching smart of
Wentworth's morning hours was vaguely soothed and comforted by Fay's
gentle presence.

She appeared to listen to him, but in reality she heard nothing. She sat
looking straight in front of her, a tear slipping from time to time down
her white cheek. Except on one or two occasions Fay had that rarest
charm of looking beautiful in tears. She became paler than ever, never
red and disfigured and convulsed, with the prosaic cold in the head that
accompanies the emotions of less fortunate women.

"How old is Michael?" she asked suddenly in the midst of a painstaking
account of certain leniencies as to diet, certain macaronis and soups