"I don't mind it, I have the girls, on three mornings, you know."

"You mean that you don't mind it because you are so used to it?"

She had regained some of her composure:--for one thing he was beside
her, no longer blocking her way back into the room. "I like solitude,
you know," she was able to smile.

"Really like it?"

"Sometimes."

"Better than the company of some people, you mean?"

"Yes."

"But not better than mine," he smiled back. "Come, do encourage me, and
say that you are glad to see me."

In her joy the bewilderment was growing, but she said that, of course,
she was glad to see him.

"I've been so bored, so badgered," said Sir Hugh, stretching himself a
little as though to throw off the incubus of tiresome memories; "and
this morning when I left a dull country house, I said to myself: Why not
go down and see Amabel?--I don't believe she will mind.--I believe that,
perhaps, she'll be pleased.--I know that I want to go very much.--So
here I am:--very glad to be here--with dear Amabel."

She looked out, silent, blissful, and perplexed.

He was not hard; he was not irritated; all trace of vexed preoccupation
was gone; but he was not the Sir Hugh that she had seen for all these
twenty years. He was new, and yet he reminded her of something, and the
memory moved towards her through a thick mist of years, moved like a
light through mist. Far, sweet, early things came to her as its heralds;
the sound of brooks running; the primrose woods where she had wandered
as a girl; the singing of prophetic birds in Spring. The past had never
come so near as now when Sir Hugh--yes, there it was, the fair, far
light--was making her remember their long past courtship. And a shudder
of sweetness went through her as she remembered, of sweetness yet of
unutterable sadness, as though something beautiful and dead had been
shown to her. She seemed to lean, trembling, to kiss the lips of a
beautiful dead face, before drawing over it the shroud that must cover
it for ever.

Sir Hugh was silent also. Her silence, perhaps, made him conscious of
memories. Presently, looking behind them, he said:--"I'm keeping you
standing. Shall we go to the fire?"

She followed him, bending a little to the fire, her arm on the
mantel-shelf, a hand held out to the blaze. Sir Hugh stood on the other
side. She was not thinking of herself, hardly of him. Suddenly he took
the dreaming hand, stooped to it, and kissed it. He had released it