'All I have been!' cried Maud, with a vehement remorse; 'I could tell him that best. You could tell him. I mean to tell him the first moment I can--and I am in an agony till I can do so. I have been mad, Mr. Boldero, or in a dream, I think, and you tried in vain to wake me. Now I am awake, and know the truth. All the things and people we have left behind are merely shadows, and I mistook them for realities; only one thing in the world is real for me: my love for my husband. Other people flatter and excite and amuse one, and one is carried away with all sorts of follies; but my heart never moves and never can. It is his and his only, and I never knew it fully till last night. My life, I find, is centred in his.' 'I pray God,' said Boldero devoutly, 'we may find him better; and somehow I believe we shall.' A level stretch of valley lay before them, and allowed them to push sharply over the next five or six miles. By ten o'clock they arrived at their halting-place, where Boldero proposed that they should wait till the afternoon. Maud, however, was too restless to halt. 'Suppose,' she said, 'we push on another stage? The sun is not so very dreadful, after all.' 'The next two stages are bad ones,' said Boldero. 'Don't you remember that long, troublesome valley with the rocks on either side?--by twelve o'clock they will be all red-hot.' 'Well,' said Maud, 'we will tie a wet towel over my head. Will it do you any harm? or the horses?' 'Me!' cried Boldero, in a tone which at once reassured his companion that no danger need be apprehended so far as he was concerned; 'as for my horses, they can, of course, go as many stages as you like.' So they dressed and breakfasted and Maud declared herself quite ready for an immediate start. Boldero brought in a great plantain-leaf from the garden of the little inn, and they tied this under her wide pith hat; then Maud armed herself with an enormous umbrella, and 'Now,' she said, 'I am prepared for anything.' By the end of the stage, however, her strength was spent: she sank into the first chair that offered itself, and acquiesced thankfully, like a tired child, in Boldero's decision that they should not move again till the day's fierce glare was past. There was no need to hurry, for she was now within a night's march of her husband, and by the morrow's morning would have known and seen the worst. CHAPTER XXXIX. THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN. Thus 'twas granted me To know he loved me to the depth and height Of such large natures, ever competent With grand horizons, by the land or sea, To love's grand sunrise. Small spheres hold small fires, But he loved largely.