ife, so beautiful at first in its sweet theme of mutual love and
trust, now lost its harmony, and jarred into a hopeless jangle. The very
fact that she faithfully adhered to her trustful unselfishness,
acquiescing without a murmur in his decision, made readjustment the more
impossible. Thus the weeks went by.

Jim Airth worked feverishly at his proofs; drinking and smoking, when he
should have been eating and sleeping; going off suddenly, after two or
three days of continuous sitting at his desk, on desperate bouts of
violent exercise.

He walked down to Shenstone by night; sat, in bitterness of spirit under
the beeches, surrounded by empty wicker chairs;--a silent ghostly
garden-party!--watched the dawn break over the lake; prowled around the
house where Lady Ingleby lay sleeping, and narrowly escaped arrest at the
hands of Lady Ingleby's night-watchman; leaving for London by the first
train in the morning, more sick at heart than when he started.

Another time he suddenly turned in at Paddington, took the train down to
Cornwall, and astonished the Miss Murgatroyds by stalking into the
coffee-room, the gaunt ghost of his old gay self. Afterwards he went off
to Horseshoe Cove, climbed the cliff and spent the night on the ledge,
dwelling in morbid misery on the wonderful memories with which that place
was surrounded.

It was then that fresh hope, and the complete acceptance of a better
point of view, came to Jim Airth.

As he sat on the ledge, hugging his lonely misery, he suddenly became
strangely conscious of Myra's presence. It was as if the sweet wistful
grey eyes, were turned upon him in the darkness; the tender mouth smiled
lovingly, while the voice he knew so well asked in soft merriment, as
under the beeches at Shenstone: "What has come to you, you dearest old
boy?"

He had just put his hand into his pocket and drawn out his spirit-flask.
He held it for a moment, while he listened, spellbound, to that whisper;
then flung it away into the darkness, far down to the sea below. "Davy
Jones may have it," he said, and laughed aloud; "_who e'er he be!_" It
was the first time Jim Airth had laughed since that afternoon beneath the
Shenstone beeches.

Then, with the sense of Myra's presence still so near him, he lay with
his back to the cliff, his face to the moonlit sea. It seemed to him as
if again he drew her, shaking and trembling but unresisting, into his
arms, holding her there in safety until her trembling c