en she
paused and looked back to see if he were coming, but she never spoke.
When she reached the shore road she turned and went along it until
they came to an old grey house fronting the calm grey harbour. At its
gate she paused. Roger knew now who she was. Catherine had told him
about her a month ago.

She was Lilith Barr, a girl of eighteen, who had come to live with her
uncle and aunt. Her father had died some months before. She was
absolutely deaf as the result of some accident in childhood, and she
was, as his own eyes told him, exquisitely lovely in her white,
haunting style. But she was not Isabel Temple; he had tricked
himself--he had lived in a fool's paradise--oh, he must get away and
laugh at himself. He left her at her gate, disregarding the little
hand she put timidly out--but he did not laugh at himself. He went
back to Isabel Temple's grave and flung himself down on it and cried
like a boy. He wept his stormy, anguished soul out on it; and when he
rose and went away, he believed it was forever. He thought he could
never, never go there again.

* * * * *

Catherine looked at him curiously the next morning. He looked
wretched--haggard and hollow-eyed. She knew he had not come in till
the summer dawn. But he had lost the rapt, uncanny look she hated;
suddenly she no longer felt afraid of him. With this, she began to ask
questions again.

"What kept ye out so late again last night, b'y?" she said
reproachfully.

Roger looked at her in her morning ugliness. He had not really seen
her for weeks. Now she smote on his tortured senses, so long drugged
with beauty, like a physical blow. He suddenly burst into a laughter
that frightened her.

"Preserve's, b'y, have ye gone mad? Or," she added, "have ye seen
Isabel Temple's ghost?"

"No," said Roger loudly and explosively. "Don't talk any more about
that damned ghost. Nobody ever saw it. The whole story is balderdash."

He got up and went violently out, leaving Catherine aghast. Was it
possible Roger had sworn? What on earth had come over the b'y? But
come what had or come what would, he no longer looked _fey_--there was
that much to be thankful for. Even an occasional oath was better than
that. Catherine went stiffly about her dish-washing, resolving to have
'Liza Adams to supper some night.

For a week Roger lived in agony--an agony of shame and humiliation and
self-contempt. Then, when the edge of his bitter disappointm