being English were for the most part too preoccupied with
manifestations of a sympathy that should be at once heart-felt and quite
unobtrusive and altogether in the best possible taste, to have any
attention free for the soul of Lady Harman.

The sense of her freedom came and went like the sunlight of a day in
spring, though she attempted her utmost to remain overcast. After dinner
that night she was invaded by a vision of the great open years before
her, at first hopeful but growing at last to fear and a wild
restlessness, so that in defiance of possible hotel opinion, she
wandered out into the moonlight and remained for a long time standing by
the boat landing, dreaming, recovering, drinking in the white serenities
of sea and sky. There was no hurry now. She might stay there as long as
she chose. She need account for herself to no one; she was free. She
might go where she pleased, do what she pleased, there was no urgency
any more....

There was Mr. Brumley. Mr. Brumley made a very little figure at first in
the great prospect before her.... Then he grew larger in her thoughts.
She recalled his devotions, his services, his self-control. It was good
to have one understanding friend in this great limitless world....

She would have to keep that friendship....

But the glorious thing was freedom, to live untrammelled....

Through the stillness a little breeze came stirring, and she awoke out
of her dream and turned and faced the shuttered dependance. A solitary
dim light was showing on the verandah. All the rest of the building was
a shapeless mass of grey. The long pale front of the hotel seen through
a grove of orange trees was lit now at every other window with people
going to bed. Beyond, a black hillside clambered up to the edge of the
sky.

Far away out of the darknesses a man with a clear strong voice was
singing to a tinkling accompaniment.

In the black orange trees swam and drifted a score of fireflies, and
there was a distant clamour of nightingales when presently the unseen
voice had done.

Sec.13

When she was in her room again she began to think of Sir Isaac and more
particularly of that last fixed stare of his....

She was impelled to go and see him, to see for herself that he was
peaceful and no longer a figure of astonishment. She went slowly along
the corridor and very softly into his room--it remained, she felt, his
room. They had put candles about him, and the outline of his face,
showi