e,
Helene, the collar never fitted."

"Oh, he doesn't spend the winters in Paris with you?" asked Sylvia.

"He's been staying here in Lydford of late--crazy as it sounds. He was
simply so bored that he couldn't think of anything else to do. He has,
besides, an absurd theory that he enjoys it more in winter than in
summer. He says the natives are to be seen then. He's been here from
his childhood. He knows a good many of them, I suppose. Now, Helene,
let's see the gloves and hats."

It came over Sylvia with a passing sense of great strangeness that she
had been in this spot for four months and, with the exception of the
men at the fire, she had not met, had not spoken to, had not even
consciously seen a single inhabitant of the place.

And in the end, she went away in precisely the same state of
ignorance. On the day they drove to the station she did, indeed, give
one fleeting glimpse over the edge of her narrow prison-house of
self-centered interest. Surrounded by a great many strapped and
buckled pieces of baggage, with Helene, fascinatingly ugly in her
serf's uniform, holding the black leather bag containing Aunt
Victoria's jewels, they passed along the street for the last time,
under the great elms already almost wintry with their bare boughs.
Now that it was too late, Sylvia felt a momentary curiosity about the
unseen humanity which had been so near her all the summer. She looked
out curiously at the shabby vehicles (it seemed to her that there
were more of them than in the height of the season), at the
straight-standing, plainly dressed, briskly walking women and children
(there seemed to be a new air of life and animation about the street
now that most of the summer cottages were empty), and at the lounging,
indifferent, powerfully built men. She wondered, for a moment, what
they were like, with what fortitude their eager human hearts bore the
annual display of splendor they might never share. They looked, in
that last glimpse, somehow quite strong, as though they would care
less than she would in their places. Perhaps they were only hostile,
not envious.

"I dare say," said Aunt Victoria, glancing out at a buck-board, very
muddy as to wheels, crowded with children, "that it's very forlorn for
the natives to have the life all go out of the village when the summer
people leave. They must feel desolate enough!"

Sylvia wondered.

The last thing she saw as the train left the valley was the upland
pass betwe