about a mile from the village, there is a long one-storyed
bungalow, built on the sand-hills. The sand is in the garden, where no
flowers grow but sea-pinks and the wild horn-poppy; it lies in drifts
about the verandah, and is whirled by the Atlantic storms on to the low
thatched roof. The house stands alone but for a few fishermen's huts
beside it, huddled close together for neighbourhood.

Here, because it was the most man-forsaken spot she knew, Audrey had
come, exchanging the roar of London for the roar of the Atlantic. She
thought she would find consolation in the presence of Nature. London had
become intolerable to her. Everywhere she turned she was reminded of the
hateful Laura. Laura stood open in the window of every book-shop; Laura
lay on every drawing-room table; there was no getting away from her. And
yet Audrey's notoriety had won her more friends than she had ever had
before. Everywhere people were kind to her; they made much of her; they
said it was "hard lines," it was "a shame," "execrable," "unpardonable,"
and they assured her that nobody thought a bit the worse of her for all
that. Some even went so far as to declare that they saw not the remotest
resemblance between her and the popular heroine. But it was no use.
Nothing could raise her in her own esteem. She fled. She longed to be
alone with Nature. She took the bungalow for the winter; and once there,
she wished she had never come.

She arrived in a storm that lasted some days. She thought she would have
gone mad simply with hearing the mad wind and sea. It was the same
whether she sat indoors listening to them, or she walked out, battling
with the wreaths of whirling sand. After the storm came the dull, grey,
heaving calm,--always the rolling clouds, the rolling sand-hills, and
the rolling sea. That was infinitely worse. And to add to her
depression, Audrey had never been so rigidly confined to the society of
her chaperon; there was nobody else to see or hear, and the boundaries
of the poor lady's intellect were conspicuous in the melancholy waste.
There was no escape from her except into the cold monotony without.

Then February set in warm though grey. One morning Audrey was able to
sit out in a sunny hollow of the sand-hills, where the rabbits had
flattened a nest for her. Then she could think.

She was in the presence of Nature. Art was nothing to this. Art,
in the time of her brief acquaintance with it, had baffled her, and
given her a hi