of the sky, a falling leaf or two fluttered for a moment and faded; it was the god of the air dropping in visible showers to bless the earth-origin, perhaps, of the myth of Jupiter and Danaë. As this thought flashed across Wilmot, she felt herself mentally and physically quivering with a vivid life that matched the splendour of colour all round her.

A gull flying seaward croaked hoarsely, as he passed so close that the straining tension of the wings was visible. The fierceness of its eyes, that seem to have looked the cosmic forces in the face since creation's dawn, was reflected somehow in Wilmot's face. She, too, was awake, even cruelly so.

"I never can abide to hear them birds scritch," said Tryphena, as they parted; "it do make the goosey-flesh come up like stubble upon my back, same as putting my feet in hot water."

In these parts the gulls contest the sovereignty of the air with the rarer inland birds, so that it is not an unusual sight to see a whole flock of sea-birds following the plough.

Like the birds that are now giving up the wastes of untilled sea for the fat furrows, Wilmot, since her marriage, had been half tamed in the domestic, firelit atmosphere. To-day she was again the creature of instinct, with a fierce zest in the primæval power over the hunted thing to the bird, fish; to the woman, man; to both, a world that exists but to be drained of its delights.

Lighting her fire on a ledge, she laughed at the vision of the cider-keg, for it exactly expressed her own mood. She crooned a wordless song to herself as she stooped to fill her kettle at the stream. Above her the sun turned the leafage of the wild cherry red-brown with the fire of death within, and deeper down the valley flashed the pomegranate of the hawthorn berries. At the mouth of the valley sea and sky merged into infinite distance.

CHAPTER II

MOON-RISE

"INCENSE to the wood-gods," said Archelaus Rouncevell, flinging a handful of fir-cones on the crackling fire of boughs and gorse. As he stooped to blow on the embers of it the grey ash rose in clouds, and he noticed how the fragments were feathered like frost crystals. The smoke hurt his eyes, but the spirit of the wood came out in the scent of it, aromatic, breathing of summer, of spring winds and the great woodland heart.

The fire had been lit on a ledge overlooking the valley, and the note of a cock-pheasant in the wood below jarred against the rolling undertone of the pebbles on the beach as they shifted up and down. The blaze burnt, now violet, now red, pulsating with the lad's breath like the visible spirit of life. The glow of it deepened the eye-sockets and sharpened the contours of his face, as firelight, like hunger, always does. But it could not hide the dreamer's high forehead, the eyes that glanced with a lizard-like length and quickness of gaze, or the tenderly shaven lips that often trembled, even now, with his seven-year-old smile. Had there been any lines to smooth away from his face, the firelight would have done so, after its kindly wont, but there were none. The long, pointed artist fingers matched the oval of his face, that had too little of length for melancholy and too little of breadth for fighting strength.

Wilmot, lying close against the slate from which the ledge jutted, watched him keenly as he resumed the occupation which he had interrupted in order to mend the fire. It

was much later in the evening, and at the head of the valley a pallor was beginning to gleam from the horizon, whence widespread clouds with pearly light behind them threw a lustre down the narrow combe.

The moon would soon be up, and in the pearly light the larches shone yellow against the Scotch firs that cut the skyline. Scattered tea-things showed how the interval had been occupied by the pair, and the warmth of the fire was grateful in the cool night. Archelaus was reading aloud, from the book of splendid youth, of the divine folly that would storm the battlements of life ere the days lengthen into weariness.

"Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air,

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter."

All the power of Kit Marlowe's lines rolled out in his voice, that now and then broke from a man's steady baritone to a boy's flute note. One guessed, from the ring of it, how, for a second or two, Archelaus was Marlowe over again—the poet who gathers up in a line the poignant sting of a passion.

"Shut the book," said Wilmot, from her corner, where the smell of crushed thyme mingled with that of the burning pine cones. "Put it away this minute. It's-it's-unwholesome."

The boy laughed, and his eyes flashed into hers like living agates; but he obeyed, and flung the Great Elizabethan against a thyme knot. Wilmot's mind cast about for something practical, for the agate eyes were disturbing.

"How is the work getting on ?" she asked in sagest tones. Archelaus had spent some months in a Newlyn studio ; it was almost the only practical teaching he had ever received, and even that had been cut short by Mrs. Rouncevell's fears.

His face darkened. "Paint," he said savagely; "I haven't done a stroke for weeks. I knew before how hard it was to put down what you saw of all this." He waved his

hand up the combe and down. "And the more you see the less you get down. But that's nothing to the other world." "What do you mean?"

"The world inside you. It's like walking on the sea: you can do it, if you don't think. But suddenly you look down. You're lost then, for the weeds wave beneath you and the sands shift. It isn't solid any more. You've looked into your own self, and that's worse than valleys and hills -outside you. No, I don't think I shall ever paint again."

The sense of final renunciation, which is one of youth's most delightful melancholies, overwhelmed him.

"You ought not to be brooding over 'rendering' this or that. Oh, if I only were a man, with a man's chances. And here you are wasting the years that mean so much. Let me tell you something about myself."

"Tell me," he said, drawing nearer and catching her hand. "You see," she said, "I was brought up at Challacombe mostly by Uncle Dickie. He taught me, in some ways, like a boy. He made me learn that I wasn't anything unless I paid back by some sort of work for all the food and warmth and thought that had been spent for me. Not to him, you know, but to the world. Dear old Dickie wouldn't have grudged me the very dearest thing he owned. But he made me reckon up my debts."

"I know," said Archelaus; "I've thought of that too. But how ?"

66

How? In fifty ways, if one is a man. But listen again. That's what I was taught, and then it all stopped; I was just a girl, and it seemed I couldn't repay. It was all very well for Uncle Dickie to talk so. He is a boatbuilder who sees that his boats are honestly made. He likes to think that they will hold men's lives in the hollow of them." "Yes, that's fine," said Archelaus, gazing into the fire. "So it is," said Wilmot, bitterly; "but, you see, I

couldn't build boats, and William, that's uncle's servant, boils potatoes better than I. There was only one thing for me to do; so I-married, when I got the chance. You see, every woman, as well as every man, must have a leverage, a chance of a career. That's woman's lever-marriage." "But--" said Archelaus, patting the hand he had caught.

"Oh yes, it's full of 'but.' There are women who can live alone and make their way, only too often over their own hearts. I wasn't one. But we didn't want to talk of me; it was of you we began."

"I'm tied here; mother wants me to hang about at her apron-strings," he said. "She hates my painting; she has put every obstacle in the way of it, only because it was my father's trade. She wants me to muddle on at St. Piran's under her eye." "Then go. There's nothing else for it. the world and learn what the world's like. weeds sway and the sands shift inside you. boat above them. Go away from St. Piran's."

"And leave you? Ah, I cannot."

Go out into

Let the sea

Drive your

"Why, you foolish fellow, I'm going myself next week. And, after all, what can you and I be to each other, save very good friends? Archelaus, don't make me regret I made a friend of you."

"I'll try not to," he said in a choked voice.

"Your mother was wrong not to let you have a profession, but you can't always be looking backwards. Go away and fight for your own hand, and bear in mind my envy that you carry with you."

"I've never seen anything of the world, except out in Canada, where I went to some of mother's people for a year. Somehow this fire brings back Canada to me. It must have been the wood ash that looked like a snow-flurry," he said.