was crying her heart out: "Don't cry, Mums, I
don't care."

When they had gone, she asked for her violin. She made them hold it for
her, and drew the bow across the strings; but the notes that came out
were so trembling and uncertain that she dropped the bow and broke into a
passion of sobbing. Since then, no complaint or moan of any kind....

But to go back. On Sunday, the day after I wrote, as I was coming from a
walk, I met a little boy making mournful sounds on a tin whistle.

"Coom ahn!" he said, "the Miss wahnts t' zee yu."

I went to her room. In the morning she had seemed better, but now looked
utterly exhausted. She had a letter in her hand.

"It's this," she said. "I don't seem to understand it. He wants me to
do something--but I can't think, and my eyes feel funny. Read it to me,
please."

The letter was from Zachary. I read it to her in a low voice, for Mrs.
Hopgood was in the room, her eyes always fixed on Pasiance above her
knitting. When I'd finished, she made me read it again, and yet again.
At first she seemed pleased, almost excited, then came a weary, scornful
look, and before I'd finished the third time she was asleep. It was a
remarkable letter, that seemed to bring the man right before one's eyes.
I slipped it under her fingers on the bed-clothes, and went out. Fancy
took me to the cliff where she had fallen. I found the point of rock
where the cascade of ivy flows down the cliff; the ledge on which she had
climbed was a little to my right--a mad place. It showed plainly what
wild emotions must have been driving her! Behind was a half-cut
cornfield with a fringe of poppies, and swarms of harvest insects
creeping and flying; in the uncut corn a landrail kept up a continual
charring. The sky was blue to the very horizon, and the sea wonderful,
under that black wild cliff stained here and there with red. Over the
dips and hollows of the fields great white clouds hung low down above the
land. There are no brassy, east-coast skies here; but always sleepy,
soft-shaped clouds, full of subtle stir and change. Passages of
Zachary's Pearse's letter kept rising to my lips. After all he's the man
that his native place, and life, and blood have made him. It is useless
to expect idealists where the air is soft and things good to look on (the
idealist grows where he must create beauty or comfort for himself);
useless to expect a man of law and order, in one whose fathers have
stared at