to the
right. A short way up the glade stood two figures--Guthrie and
Maud--engaged in conversation. They were standing facing each other.
She seemed to be expostulating with him in a laughing way; he stood
bareheaded, holding his hat in his hand, eagerly defending himself. The
pose of the two seemed to show an easy sort of comradeship. Maud was
holding a stick in both hands behind her, and half resting upon it.
They seemed entirely absorbed in what they were saying. Howard could
not bear to intrude upon the scene. He fell back among the trees,
retraced his steps, and then sat down on a grassy bank, a little off
the path, and waited. It was the last confirmation of his fears. It was
not quite a lover-like scene, but they evidently understood each other,
and were wholly at their ease together, while Guthrie's admiring and
passionate look did not escape him. He rested his head in his hands,
and bore the truth as he might have borne a physical pain. The summer
woods, the green thickets, the sunlight on the turf, the white clouds,
the rich plain just visible through the falling tree-trunks, all seemed
to him like a vision seen by a spirit in torment, something horribly
unreal and torturing. The two streams of beauty and misery appeared to
run side by side, so distinct, so unblending; but the horrible fact was
that though sorrow was able not only to assert its own fiery power,
like the sting of some malignant insect, it could also obliterate and
efface joy; it could even press joy into its service, to accentuate its
torment; while the joy and beauty of life seemed wholly unable to
soothe or help him, but were brushed aside, just as a stern soldier,
armed and mailed, could brush aside the onslaught of some delicate and
frenzied boy. Was pain the stronger power, was it the ultimate power?
In that dark moment, Howard felt that it was. Joy seemed to him like a
little pool of crystalline water, charming enough if tended and
sheltered, but a thing that could be soiled and scattered in a moment
by the onrush of some foul and violent beast.

He came at last to the rendezvous. Miss Merry sat at her post
transferring to a little block of paper a smeared and streaky picture
of the chalk-pit, which seemed equally unintelligible at whatever angle
it might be held. Jack was couched at a little distance in the heather,
smoking a pipe. Howard went and sat down moodily beside him. "An odd
thing, a picnic," said Jack musingly; "I am not sure