o her. She stiffened and drew back.

"And am I to tell Horace, then, that you are happy here?"

"Yes. Tell him to come and see how happy I am."

"Very well."

As Edith opened the door to go, the voice in the next room stopped
singing, and the young man became suddenly very still.

CHAPTER LVII

Lucia lay back in her chair, wondering, not at Edith, but at herself.
Her cousin's visit had been so far effectual that it had made her
aware of the attitude of her own mind. If she had been told beforehand
that she could be happy in a Bloomsbury boarding-house, or within any
reasonable distance of such people as Miss Bishop and Mr. Soper, the
thing would have appeared to her absurd. And yet it was so. She was
happy among these dreadful people, as she had not been happy at
Hampstead among the cultured and refined. But when she came to examine
into the nature of this happiness she found that it contained no
positive element; that it consisted mainly of relief, relief from the
strain of an incessant anxiety and uncertainty. That the strain had
been divided between her and Horace had only made it worse, for she
had had the larger share of the anxiety, he of the uncertainty. Not
that he was more uncertain than in the old days at Harmouth. He was
less so. But she had never been anxious then. For after all they had
understood each other; and apparently it was the understanding now
that failed. Yet Horace had been right when he told himself that Lucia
would never imply anything, infer anything, claim anything, take
anything for granted on the sanction of that understanding. She would
not have hurried by a look or word the slow movements of the love
which somehow he had led her to believe in. Love between man and woman
to her mind was a sort of genius; and genius, as she said long ago to
poor Rickman, must always have about it a divine uncertainty. Yes,
love too was the wind of the divine spirit blowing where it listeth,
the kindling of the divine fire. She had waited for it patiently,
reverently, not altogether humbly, but with a superb possession of her
soul. Better to wait for years than rush to meet it, and so be tossed
by the wind and shrivelled by the fire. Then, when the crash came five
years ago, though she could hardly conceive it as altering her
cousin's attitude, she knew that it must alter hers. The understanding
had been partly a family affair; and her side of the family was now
involved in debt and poverty an