a great and sudden change in the life of Denas. For
the past eight weeks she had been in an atmosphere of excitement,
tinctured with the subtle hopes and expectations of love. In it she
had grown mentally far beyond the realization of her friends. She had
observed, assimilated, and translated her new ideas through her own
personality as far as her means permitted. If her mother and father
had looked carefully at their daughter, they would have seen how much
more effectively her hair was arranged; what piquancy of mode had been
observed in the making of her new dresses; what careful pride had
dictated the fashion and fit of her high-heeled shoes; what trouble
was systematically taken to preserve her delicate skin and to restore
the natural beauty of her hands--in short, they must have noticed that
their child's toilet and general appearance was being gradually but
still rapidly removed from all fitness with her present surroundings.

And just after Elizabeth's marriage came on the hardest and most
distinctive part of the fisher's year. All along the rocky coast the
"huers" were standing watching for the shoals of pilchard, and the men
were in the boats beneath, waiting for their signal to shoot the
seines. Every fisher had now, in an intense degree, the look which
always distinguishes him--the look of a man accustomed to reflect and
to be ready for emergencies. This year the shoals were so large that
boat-loads were caught easily in fifty feet of water.

Then every wife in the hamlet had her hands full and busy from dawn
till dark; and Joan went to the work with an exuberant alacrity and
good nature. In former years Denas had felt all the enthusiasm of the
great sea harvest. This year she could not endure its clamour and its
labour. What had happened to her that the sight of the beautiful fish
was offensive and the smell of its curing intolerable? She shut her
eyes from the silvery heaps and would gladly have closed her ears
against the jubilant mirth, the shouting and laughing and singing
around her.

Her intense repugnance did really at last breed in her a low fever,
which she almost gladly succumbed to. She thought it easier to lie in
bed and suffer in solitude than to put her arms to her white elbows in
fresh fish and bear the familiar jokes of the busy, merry workers in
the curing-sheds. Denas was not really responsible for this change. It
had grown into her nature, day by day and week by week, while she was
unc