So she stayed in the house between the fields while Agnes went to the marsh, and though she paid her an afternoon visit now and then, she could not be coaxed to stop for as much as a night. Agnes would have been glad enough of her company, at times. She found the marsh very lonely at first, and the hours were long when Thomas was out on the land. She did not mind very much when the weather was fine, and she could see the houses winking across the sands, but it was dreary indeed when the bay was blotted out and there was nothing to break the shaken veil of the rain. That was one of her reasons for welcoming old Kit; they would be such cronies, she and the old man! She would see him about the garden while she was at work in the house, and could call to him from the windows if she felt inclined. Just to hear her own voice answered once in a while would give the place a feeling of fresh life. They would sit on the new seat shelling peas, or watching the fishing boats making home with their catch, their sails three-cornered blurs on the opal evening sky. They would sit on the white-stoned hearth of a winter’s night, and watch the fire burn red with the hardening of the frost. He would have tales to tell when the gales came out in the spring, and the narrow sea deepened and frothed into driven flood. Thomas would be out with the sheep, and she would want a tale to distract her from the storm. And sometimes, perhaps, Kit would play her the old, thin tunes, bringing the dance-itch back to her sober feet. That careless pleasure seemed to have dropped behind—not but what she could dance with the smartest yet. But she seemed to herself to have shut a door at her back, and behind that door were the strains of a violin. She began to sing as she went about, and her voice escaped through the open windows and fled away through the door; yet it was in the house all the time as well. Down on the shore a man looked up as he stepped on the sands, hearing the voice that was both within and without. The house looked empty, he thought, with all its windows wide, and the voice that sang seemed a bodiless voice, making the house the emptier for its song. It followed him as he went leisurely out, making for the channel and the farm across. He did not hurry, for the tide would not be ready to turn for over an hour. Presently he was on the bank, hailing the farm for a boat, and his voice, shrill and lost-sounding in the open space, broke like a cry for help across the joy of the song. Thomas, down by the gate, heard both the song and the cry, but the old man coming in the trap heard only the fiddle singing on his knee. She sang so long that she did not know when she stopped, but Thomas, down by the gate, felt as if a fiddle-string had snapped. He had the same sense as of something wounded and ceasing to be. It was just at that moment the trap checked at his side....