te true--one does. The
world's too hard; it doesn't give one credit for fine feelings--it
takes a short cut and thinks one a fool."

"But the worst of it is," he went on ruefully, "that I never feel any
older. I have those enthusiasms and that romance in the same way now
at forty-five--just as I did at nineteen. I never could bear
quarrelling with anybody. I used to go and apologise even when it
wasn't my fault--so that, you see, the present situation is difficult."

"Ah, but you must keep your end up," she broke in quickly. "It's the
only way--don't give in. Robin is just like that. He is self-centred,
all shams now, and when he sees that you are taken in by them, just as
he is himself, he despises you. But when he sees you laugh at them or
cut them down, then he respects you. I'm the only person, I think,
that knows him really here. The others haven't grasped him at all."

"My father grows worse every day," Harry went on, as though pursuing
his own train of thought. "He can't last much longer, and when he goes
I shall miss him terribly. We have understood each other during this
fortnight as we never did in all those early years. Sometimes I funk
it utterly--following him with all of them against me."

"Why, no," she cried. "It's splendid. You are in power. They can do
nothing, and Robin will come round when he sees how you face it out.
Why, I expect that he's coming already. I've faced things out here all
these years, and you dare to say that you can't stand a few months of
it."

"What have you faced?" he asked. "Tell me exactly. I want to know all
about you; you've never told me very much, and it's only fair that I
should know."

"Yes," she said gravely, "it is--well, you shall!--at least a part of
it. A woman always keeps a little back," she said, looking at him with
a smile. "As soon as she ceases to be a puzzle she ceases to interest."

She turned and watched the sea. Then, after a moment's pause, she said:

"What do you want to know? I can only give you bits of things--when,
for instance, I ran away from my nurse, aged five, was picked up by an
applewoman with a green umbrella who introduced me to three old ladies
with black pipes and moustaches--I was found in a coal cellar. Then we
lived in Bloomsbury--a little house looking out on to a little green
park--all in miniature it seems on looking back. I don't think that I
was a very good child, but they didn't look after me very muc