er cottage Olive stood often by the river.

What lay beneath all that bright water--what strange, deep, swaying,
life so far below the ruffling of wind, and the shadows of the willow
trees? Was love down there, too? Love between sentient things, where it
was almost dark; or had all passion climbed up to rustle with the reeds,
and float with the water-flowers in the sunlight? Was there colour? Or
had colour been drowned? No scent and no music; but movement there
would be, for all the dim groping things bending one way to the
current--movement, no less than in the aspen-leaves, never quite still,
and the winged droves of the clouds. And if it were dark down there, it
was dark, too, above the water; and hearts ached, and eyes just as much
searched for that which did not come.

To watch it always flowing by to the sea; never looking back, never
swaying this way or that; drifting along, quiet as Fate--dark, or
glamorous with the gold and moonlight of these beautiful days and
nights, when every flower in her garden, in the fields, and along the
river banks, was full of sweet life; when dog-roses starred the lanes,
and in the wood the bracken was nearly a foot high.

She was not alone there, though she would much rather have been; two
days after she left London her Uncle and Aunt had joined her. It was
from Cramier they had received their invitation. He himself had not yet
been down.

Every night, having parted from Mrs. Ercott and gone up the wide shallow
stairs to her room, she would sit down at the window to write to Lennan,
one candle beside her--one pale flame for comrade, as it might be his
spirit. Every evening she poured out to him her thoughts, and ended
always: "Have patience!" She was still waiting for courage to pass that
dark hedge of impalpable doubts and fears and scruples, of a dread that
she could not make articulate even to herself. Having finished, she
would lean out into the night. The Colonel, his black figure cloaked
against the dew, would be pacing up and down the lawn, with his
good-night cigar, whose fiery spark she could just discern; and, beyond,
her ghostly dove-house; and, beyond, the river--flowing. Then she would
clasp herself close--afraid to stretch out her arms, lest she should be
seen.

Each morning she rose early, dressed, and slipped away to the village to
post her letter. From the woods across the river wild pigeons would be
calling--as though Love itself pleaded with her afresh each