hildren and boys and girls felt
drawn to her. It was the dream in her eyes that stirred the love in
their hearts; though they knew it no more than the soup in the pipkin
knows why it bubbles and boils. For it cannot see the fire. But to them
she did not seem old; her strength and eagerness were still upon her,
and that silver needlework with which time broiders all men had in her
its special beauty, setting her aloof in the unabandoned dream which
the young so often desert as their youth deserts them. Those of her
age, seeing that unyouthful gleam of her hair combined with the
still-youthful dream of her eyes, felt as though they could not touch
her; for no man can break another's web, he can only break his own, and
these had torn their films to tatters long ago, and shouldered their
way through the smudgy rents, and no more walked where she walked. But
very young people knew the places she walked in, and saw her clearly,
for they walked there too, though they were growing up and she was
growing old.

At the end of the second year there was a storm. It lasted three days
without stopping. Such fury of rain and thunder she had never heard.
The gaunt rooms of the mill were steeped in gloom, except when
lightning stared through the flat windows or split into fierce cracks
on the dingy glass. Those three days she spent by candle-light. Outside
the world seemed to lie under a dark doom.

On the third morning she woke early. She had had restless nights, but
now and then slept heavily; and out of one dull slumber she awakened to
the certainty that something strange had happened. The storm had lulled
at last. Through her window, set high in the wall, she could see the
dead light of a blank gray dawn. She had seen other eyeless mornings on
her windowpane; but this was different, the air in her room was
different. Something unknown had been taken from or added to it. As she
lay there wondering, but not yet willing to discover, the flat light at
the window was blocked out. A seagull beat against it with its wings
and settled on the sill.

The flutter and the settling of the bird overcame her. It was as though
reality were more than she could bear. The birds of memory and pain
flew through her heart.

She got up and went to the window. The gull did not move. It was broken
and exhausted by the storm. And beyond it she looked down upon the sea.

Yes, it was true. The sea itself washed at the walls of the mill.

She did not unde