lthough it was
late in the autumn when Beth and Aunt Victoria returned. It had been
such a lovely season that the holiday people lingered, loath to leave
the freshness of the sea and the freedom of the shore for the stuffy
indoor duties and the conventional restrictions of their town lives.

On the day of their arrival, Beth looked about her in amaze. She had
experienced such a world of change in herself since she went away,
that she was surprised to find the streets unaltered; and yet,
although they were unaltered, they did not look the same. It was as if
the focus of her eyes had been readjusted so as to make familiar
objects seem strange, and change the perspective of everything; which
gave the place a different air, a look of having been swept and
garnished and set in order like a toy-town. But the people they passed
were altogether unchanged, and this seemed stranger still to Beth.
There they had been all the time, walking about as usual, wearing the
same clothes, thinking the same thoughts; they had had no new
experiences, and, what was worse, they were not only unconscious of
any that she might have had, but were profoundly indifferent; and to
Beth, on the threshold of life, all eager interest in everything,
caring greatly to know, and ready to sympathise, this vision of the
self-centred with shrivelled hearts was terrible; it gave her the
sensation of being the one living thing that could feel in a world of
automata moved by machinery.

Bernadine and her mother had met them at the station, but Beth was so
busy looking about her, collecting impressions, she had hardly a word
to say to either of them. Mrs. Caldwell set this down as another sign
of want of proper affection, but Aunt Victoria grumped that it was
nothing but natural excitement.

The first thing Beth did after greeting Harriet, who stood smiling at
the door, was to run upstairs to her mother's bedroom to settle the
question of how much of the garden was visible from the window; and
then she rushed on up to the attic, dragged a big box under the
skylight in hot haste, and climbed up on it to look at the sea. It was
the one glimpse of it to be had from the house, just a corner, where
the water washed up against the white cliffs that curved round an
angle of the bay. Beth flung the skylight open, and gazed, then drew
in her breath with a great sigh of satisfaction. The sea! The sea!
Even that glimpse of it was refreshing as a long cool drink to one
e