on the suspected sorrow of the young
doctor. But in that night and that morning Lily ran forward towards
Maurice, set her feet upon the line that divides men from women. She
knew that she had done so only when she next encountered him. Then, as
their eyes met she was seized with a painful idea of guilt, bred by an
absurd feeling that he could see into her mind, and know how all her
thoughts had been crowding about him. It is a dangerous symptom that
sensation of one's mind being visible to another as a thing observed
through glass. Lily did not understand her danger, but she was full of a
turmoil of uneasiness. Maurice noticed it and felt conscious also, as if
some secret understanding existed between him and Lily, yet there was
none, there could be none.

In conclave the individually stupid can sometimes almost touch
cleverness. Brayfield only began to talk steadily about Lily and the
young doctor from the day of this meeting of self-consciousnesses which
had, as it chanced, taken place on the pavement of the curved parade by
the sea. Till that day the little town had attributed to Maurice
hopelessness, to Lily simply friendship for a sad young man. Now its
members talked the usual gossip that attends the flirtations of the
sincere, but added to it a considerable divergence of opinions as to the
likelihood of Maurice's conversion from despair. Lily, they were all
decided, began to love Maurice. But some believed and some denied, that
Maurice began to love Lily. This would have been hard for Lily had she
noticed it, but her fanciful and enthusiastic mind was concentrated on
one thing only and her range of vision was consequently narrowed. She
was incessantly engaged in trying to trace the footsteps of the doctor's
misery, of which she was now fully convinced. And indeed, since that
Sabbath evening already described, Maurice had scarcely endeavoured to
play any part of ordinary happiness to her. Her partial penetration of
his secret quickly brought a sense of relief to him. There was something
consoling in the idea that this little girl divined his loneliness of
soul, if not its reason.

By degrees they grew quietly so accustomed to the silent familiarity
existing between their ebbing and flowing thoughts; they were--without a
word spoken--so thoroughly certain of the language their minds were
uttering to each other, that when their lips did speak at length, the
words that came were like a continuance of an already long