r bed with her hands pressed to her eyes. She was used to
loneliness--that necessary lot of natures such as hers; but the bitter
isolation of this hour was such as to drive even her lonely nature to
despair.

She rose at last, and repaired the ravages made in her face and dress,
lest anyone should see that she was suffering. Then, first making sure
that Hilary had left the garden, she stole out.

She wandered towards Hyde Park. It was Whitsuntide, a time of fear to
the cultivated Londoner. The town seemed all arid jollity and paper bags
whirled on a dusty wind. People swarmed everywhere in clothes which did
not suit them; desultory, dead-tired creatures who, in these few green
hours of leisure out of the sandy eternity of their toil, were not
suffered to rest, but were whipped on by starved instincts to hunt
pleasures which they longed for too dreadfully to overtake.

Bianca passed an old tramp asleep beneath a tree. His clothes had clung
to him so long and lovingly that they were falling off, but his face was
calm as though masked with the finest wax. Forgotten were his sores and
sorrows; he was in the blessed fields of sleep.

Bianca hastened away from the sight of such utter peace. She wandered
into a grove of trees which had almost eluded the notice of the crowd.
They were limes, guarding still within them their honey bloom. Their
branches of light, broad leaves, near heart-shaped, were spread out
like wide skirts. The tallest of these trees, a beautiful, gay creature,
stood tremulous, like a mistress waiting for her tardy lover. What
joy she seemed to promise, what delicate enticement, with every veined
quivering leaf! And suddenly the sun caught hold of her, raised her
up to him, kissed her all over; she gave forth a sigh of happiness, as
though her very spirit had travelled through her lips up to her lover's
heart.

A woman in a lilac frock came stealing through the trees towards Bianca,
and sitting down not far off, kept looking quickly round under her
sunshade.

Presently Bianca saw what she was looking for. A young man in black coat
and shining hat came swiftly up and touched her shoulder. Half hidden
by the foliage they sat, leaning forward, prodding gently at the ground
with stick and parasol; the stealthy murmur of their talk, so soft and
intimate that no word was audible, stole across the grass; and secretly
he touched her hand and arm. They were not of the holiday crowd, and had
evidently chosen ou