brain like this can't develop a taste for the real thing. I've seen him
shaking over jokes that made me want to cry, but you mustn't expect too
much of him. He does very well. Come along, my boy, and let's have some
reasonable talk."

"He doesn't want to go!" Miriam cried.

"But he must. I know what's good for him."

"He looks just like an overgrown dancing bear," Miriam said as she
watched the two figures stepping across the moor.

Helen continued her own gloomy thoughts. "No one can like a prig."

"Oh, yes," Zebedee assured her cheerfully, "I can. Besides, you'll grow
out of it."

"She never will! She's getting worse, and it's with living here. As a
doctor, I think you might prescribe a change for her--for all of us.
What will become of us? I can't," she added bitterly, "be expected to
marry a dancing bear!"

"If you're speaking of Daniel--" Zebedee began sharply.

"Oh, don't you be cross, too! I did think I had one friend!"

"Daniel's a good man. He may be queer to look at, but he's sound. You
only hurt yourself, you know, when you speak like that."

Miriam pouted and was silent, and Helen was not sure whether to be angry
with Zebedee for speaking thus to her who must be spoiled, or glad that
he could do it to one so beautiful, while he could preserve friendliness
for a prig. But her life-long loyalty refused this incipient rivalry;
once more she decided that Miriam must have what she wanted, and she lay
with clenched hands and a tranquil brow while she listened to the
chatter which proclaimed Miriam's recovery.

Helen could see nothing but a sky which was colourless and unclouded,
and she wished she could be like that--vague, immaterial, without form.
Perhaps to reach that state was happiness; it might be negation, but it
would be peace and she had a young, desperate wish to die and escape the
alternations of joy and pain. "And yet this is nothing," she said with
foresight, and she stood up. "I'm going home."

"No!" Zebedee exclaimed in the middle of one of Miriam's sentences.

"I must. Notya's all alone. Good-night."

He would not say the word, and he walked beside her. "But I'm your
guest," he reminded her.

"I know. But you see, she's lonely."

"And I've been lonely all my life."

She caught her breath. "Have you?" Her hands moved against her skirt and
she looked uneasily about her. "Have you?" She was pulled two ways, and
with a feeling of escape, she found an answer for him. "But you are yo