These arrangements were made on Friday night, and on the following morning Denas went home very early. As she took the cliff-road she felt that the spirit of change had entered into her heart and her imagination. The familiar path had become monotonously dreary; she had a kind of pity for the people who had not her hope of a speedy escape from it. The desolate winter beach, the lonely boats, the closed cottages--how inexorably common they looked! She felt that there must be something in the world better for her than such mean poverty. Roland's words had indeed induced this utter weariness and contempt for the conditions of her life, but the conditions themselves were thus made to give the most eloquent sanction to his advice and entreaties. And when a girl has set her face toward a wrong road, nothing is sadder in life than the general certainty there is that every small event will urge her forward on it. Usually the home-coming of Denas was watched for and seen afar off, and some special dainty was simmering on the hob for her refreshment. There was all the pleasant flurry that belongs to love's warm welcome. But she had delayed her return in order to spend the evening with Roland, and the environments of the morning had not the same air of easy happiness that attaches itself to the evening hours. Joan was elbow-deep in her week's cleaning and baking. John had the uncomfortable feeling of a man who knows himself in the way. He had only loitered around in order to see Denas and be sure that all was well with his girl. Then he was a trifle disappointed that she had not brought him his weekly paper. He went silently off to the boats, and Denas was annoyed and reproved by his patient look of disappointment. Women who are cleaning and baking are often, what is called by people less troublesomely employed, cross. Denas was sure her mother was cross and a little unreasonable. She had not time to listen to the village gossip; "it would keep till evening," she said. Then she bid Denas hurry up and get her father's heavy guernsey mended and his bottle of water filled, ready for the boat. "They be going out on the noon ebb," she said, "and back with the midnight tide, and so take thought for the Sabbath; for your father, he do have to preach over to Pendree to-morrow, and the sermon more on his mind than the fishing--God help us!" "Will father expect me to walk with him to Pendree to-morrow, mother? It is too far; I cannot walk so far." "Will he expect you? Not as I know by, Denas--if you don't want to go. There be girls as would busy all to do so. But there! it is easy seen you are neither fatherish or motherish these days." "I wish father was rich enough to stay at home and never go to sea again."