is
borne onward by a storm--no looking back, to-morrow always the goal. But
as a wounded traveller nursing carefully his hurt seeks shelter from
the scorching sun and the dank air, and travels by little stages lest
he never come at all to friendly hostel, so Guida made her way slowly
through the months of winter and of spring.

In the past, it had been February to Guida because the yellow Lenten
lilies grew on all the sheltered cotils; March because the periwinkle
and the lords-and-ladies came; May when the cliffs were a blaze of
golden gorse and the perfume thereof made all the land sweet as a
honeycomb.

Then came the other months, with hawthorn trees and hedges all in blow;
the honeysuckle gladdening the doorways, the lilac in bloomy thickets;
the ox-eyed daisy of Whitsuntide; the yellow rose of St. Brelade that
lies down in the sand and stands up in the hedges; the "mergots" which,
like good soldiers, are first in the field and last out of it; the
unscented dog-violets, orchises and celandines; the osier beds, the ivy
on every barn; the purple thrift in masses on the cliff; the sea-thistle
in its glaucous green--"the laughter of the fields whose laugh was
gold." And all was summer.

Came a time thereafter, when the children of the poor gathered
blackberries for preserves and home made wine; when the wild stock
flowered in St. Ouen's Bay; when the bracken fern was gathered from
every cotil, and dried for apple-storing, for bedding for the cherished
cow, for back-rests for the veilles, and seats round the winter fire;
when peaches, apricots, and nectarines made the walls sumptuous red and
gold; when the wild plum and crab-apple flourished in secluded roadways,
and the tamarisk dropped its brown pods upon the earth. And all this was
autumn.

At last, when the birds of passage swept aloft, snipe and teal and
barnacle geese, and the rains began; when the green lizard with its
turquoise-blue throat vanished; when the Jersey crapaud was heard
croaking no longer in the valleys and the ponds; and the cows were well
blanketed--then winter had come again.

Such was the association of seasons in Guida's mind until one day of a
certain year, when for a few hours a man had called her his wife, and
then had sailed away. There was no log that might thereafter record the
days and weeks unwinding the coils of an endless chain into that sea
whither Philip had gone.

Letters she had had, two letters, one in January, one in Marc