ister. "She's a good woman if
a little erratic, and a sovereign means a large part of her week's
takings."

"I don't think she ought to have given it," said the steward's wife, who
was waiting for her husband to drive her home. "She'll need help herself
if she gives away like that. She always _must_ be different from other
people."

Anne Hilton was walking home in the cool night air. The stars were so
clear that they seemed to rest on the fields and tree-tops, and the
rustle of the sleepless corn passed behind every hedge. She walked with
a certain carefulness as of one who had unexpectedly escaped a physical
danger; but the peril from which she was conscious of fleeing was
spiritual. She had been threatened by avarice which had prompted her to
give a small sum instead of the sovereign, and the evangelist had been
right in his intuition. It had needed a good deal of "making up her
mind" to give away the greater part of her earnings, even under the
warmth of human appeal. She had conquered, but narrowly, and there was
as much shame as satisfaction in her heart as she left the building, and
more than all a great fear lest it should be talked about.

CHAPTER XVII

It was the first day of spring, the season of swift changes. For the
first time the sky was lighter than the ground. Its brilliant clouds
threw heavy shadows on the earth, fugitive shadows which ran with the
warm wind, alert with colour. Nothing was quiet or hidden. There was not
yet sufficient life to cover or screen. Everything that had budded had a
world to itself and could be seen. Radiant, innocent, carolling,
self-revealing, the movement and action of spring were in the earth. The
running and glittering water, in winter so vivid a feature of the
fields, had become insignificant in comparison with the splendid and
vigorous sky. The noise of the wind, too, beat in one's ears louder than
the water. One had no time for meditation. One was hurried as the wind,
speeding as the sunshine. Yet the spring more than any other season is
the time when one thinks of the generations that pass--perhaps from the
very transitoriness of the visual images, their evanescence and
momentary changes reminding one so of the dead. In autumn the passage is
grave and decorous, like the advance of old age. In spring the image is
lovely and momentary, like the bright passage of those dead young.

Anne Hilton looked out to see what kind of weather it was for the
market, and