the shade; she, seated on the ground, he a
little lower, reclining at her feet.

"You don't like to look at the sea from up there?" he said after a time.

She shook her head. That empty space was to her the abomination of
desolation. But she only said again:

"It makes my head swim."

"Too big?" he inquired.

"Too lonely. It makes my heart sink, too," she added in a low voice, as
if confessing a secret.

"I'm afraid," said Heyst, "that you would be justified in reproaching me
for these sensations. But what would you have?"

His tone was playful, but his eyes, directed at her face, were serious.
She protested.

"I am not feeling lonely with you--not a bit. It is only when we come up
to that place, and I look at all that water and all that light--"

"We will never come here again, then," he interrupted her.

She remained silent for a while, returning his gaze till he removed it.

"It seems as if everything that there is had gone under," she said.

"Reminds you of the story of the deluge," muttered the man, stretched at
her feet and looking at them. "Are you frightened at it?"

"I should be rather frightened to be left behind alone. When I say, I,
of course I mean we."

"Do you?" . . . Heyst remained silent for a while. "The vision of a
world destroyed," he mused aloud. "Would you be sorry for it?"

"I should be sorry for the happy people in it," she said simply.

His gaze travelled up her figure and reached her face, where he seemed
to detect the veiled glow of intelligence, as one gets a glimpse of the
sun through the clouds.

"I should have thought it's they specially who ought to have been
congratulated. Don't you?"

"Oh, yes--I understand what you mean; but there were forty days before
it was all over."

"You seem to be in possession of all the details."

Heyst spoke just to say something rather than to gaze at her in silence.
She was not looking at him.

"Sunday school," she murmured. "I went regularly from the time I
was eight till I was thirteen. We lodged in the north of London, off
Kingsland Road. It wasn't a bad time. Father was earning good money
then. The woman of the house used to pack me off in the afternoon with
her own girls. She was a good woman. Her husband was in the post office.
Sorter or something. Such a quiet man. He used to go off after supper
for night-duty, sometimes. Then one day they had a row, and broke up the
home. I remember I cried when we had to pack up all of a