wly back.

'What is that--there?' he said almost menacingly, standing with
bloodshot eyes looking down upon Herbert.

'"That!"--what?' said Herbert, glancing up startled from his book. 'Why,
what's wrong, Lawford?'

'That,' said Lawford sullenly, yet with a faintly mournful cadence in
his voice; 'those fields and that old empty farm--that village over
there? Why did you bring me here?'

Grisel had not stirred. 'The village...'

'Ssh!' she said, catching her brother's sleeve; 'that's Detcham, yes,
Detcham.'

Lawford turned wide vacant eyes on her. He shook his head and shuddered.
'No, no; not Detcham. I know it; I know it; but it has gone out of my
mind. Not Detcham; I've been there before; don't look at me. Horrible,
horrible. It takes me back--I can't think. I stood there, trying,
trying; it's all in a blur. Don't ask me--a dream.'

Grisel leaned forward and touched his hand. 'Don't think; don't even
try. Why should you? We can't; we MUSTN'T go back.'

Lawford, still gazing fixedly, turned again a darkened face towards
the steep of the hill. 'I think, you know,' he said, stooping and
whispering, 'HE would know--the window and the sun and the singing. And
oh, of course it was too late. You understand--too late. And once... you
can't go back; oh no. You won't leave me? You see, if you go, it would
only be all. I could not be quite so alone. But Detcham--Detcham?
perhaps you will not trust me--tell me? That was not the name.'
He shuddered violently and turned dog-like beseeching eyes.
'To-morrow--yes, to-morrow,' he said, 'I will promise anything if you
will not leave me now. Once--' But again the thread running so faintly
through that inextricable maze of memory eluded him. 'So long as you
won't leave me now!' he implored her.

She was vainly trying to win back her composure, and could not answer
him at once....

In the evening after supper Grisel sat her guest down in front of a big
wood fire in the old book-room, where, staring into the playing flames,
he could fall at peace into the almost motionless reverie which he
seemed merely to harass and weary himself by trying to disperse. She
opened the little piano at the far end of the room and played on and
on as fancy led--Chopin and Beethoven, a fugue from Bach, and lovely
forlorn old English airs, till the music seemed not only a voice
persuading, pondering, and lamenting, but gathered about itself the
hollow surge of the water and the darkness; wistful and