t of gashly,
growsy, grim, sour, shuddery weather turns me into a broken-hearted
vixen. I could sit down and cry. I could lie down and die. I could
rise up and snap your head off. I am filled with verjuice and vitriol.
Oh, me! Oh, my!"

He stamped backwards and forwards, in nervous exasperation. He went to
the piano, and brought his hands down in a discordant clang upon the
keys.

"Can't anybody silence those stupid _birds_?" he cried, moving back to
the window, through which the merry piping of a robin was audible.
"How inept, how spiteful, of them to go on singing, singing, in the
face of such odious weather. Tell Wickersmith or someone to take a gun
and an umbrella, and to go out and shoot them. And the wind--the
strumpet wind," he cried. "All last night it gurgled and howled and
hooted in my chimney like a drunken banshee, and nearly frightened me
to death. And me a musician. And me the gentlest of God's
creatures--who never did any harm, but killed the mice in father's
barn. I ask you, as a man of the world, is it delicate, is it fair?
Drip, drip, drip--swish, swish, swash,--ugh, the rain! If it could
_guess_ how I despise it!" He made a face and shook his fist at it.
"Do you think the weather _knows_ how disagreeable it is? We all know
how disagreeable other people can be, but so few of us know how
disagreeable we ourselves can be. Do you think the weather knows? Do
you think it's behaving in this way purposely to vex me?"

But for Anthony it was a period not without compensations. He saw
Susanna nearly every day. On Tuesday she and Miss Sandus were his
guests at dinner; on Wednesday he and Adrian were her guests at
luncheon; on Thursday, at tea-time, they paid their visit of digestion;
on Friday, the rain holding up for a few hours in the afternoon, he and
Susanna went for a walk on the cliffs.

The sea-wind buffetted their faces, it lifted Susanna's hair and blew
stray locks about her temples, it summoned a lively colour to her
cheeks. Anthony could admire the resolute lines, the forceful action,
of her strong young body, as she braced herself to march against it.
From the turf under their feet rose the keen odour of wet earth, and
the mingled scents of clover and wild thyme. All round them
sand-martins wheeled and swerved, in a flight that was like aerial
skating. Far below, and beyond the dark-green of Rowland Marshes,
which followed the winding of the cliffs like a shadow, stretched