u mean Major Carew? Yes; he is a distant sort of cousin, but we are
two entirely different branches of the family, and had drifted widely
apart until we three met out here. Yet it was not surprising we should
meet like this. The Carews were always wanderers and adventurers, like
Drake and Frobisher and the other fine old pirates. A humdrum career
in the Blues would hardly have continued to satisfy Major Carew, any
more than the conventions and hide-bound prejudices of the Established
Church could hold my husband."

"Yet, if you will forgive my seeming rudeness, both of them apparently
took a decided step downwards from the social point of view."

"That would not trouble either of them for a moment. They sought
Freedom, and found it."

"Yet it meant, in a sense, what some people call being buried alive."

"Ah, those people do not understand. That is how I took it at first.
Shall I tell you a little, or will it bore you?"

"Please tell me. I think it is kind of you to trust me so soon with
your confidence."

Ailsa smiled. "One always knows. Anyone with insight would trust you
instinctively. But there isn't much to tell. Only that when I married
my husband he held a living in Shropshire, with a sure promise of
quick promotion; and then Doubt crept in which he could not overthrow,
and after a long struggle he gave it up because his conscience would
not let him be a hypocrite."

"But he is still a Church missionary, is he not?"

"In a sense; but he is not paid by any society, and works on his own
lines entirely. He had a little money of his own, and I have also, and
out here it is ample. But at first I was very bitter with him, and let
myself be influenced by my people who were still more bitter, and I
would not join him. I went back home and lived the old life of my
girlhood. He never uttered one word of reproach, although he was just
breaking his heart for me, and--for which I bless him every day of my
life--he wrote every mail telling me about the country and his work.
At first I scarcely read the letters, and often did not reply; but he
wrote on patiently and waited. And at last my mood changed. The
endless tea-parties began to pall, and the insipidity of my home life.
Week after week, week after week, the same round of social gatherings;
the same people, the same conversations, the same everlasting tea,
buns, and gossip. In each parish around, so many, many unmarried
women, so many empty, monotonous lives. I th