What did she say? Not one word. But, being seated at the piano just then, and having some knowledge of how she could most easily reach her lover’s heart and make him sorry for his fickleness, she began to play, with great tenderness, with graceful and touching chords, that weird, wild, cruel air, ’The Coulin,’—the old Irish air that seems to have in it all the love and agony of parting which mankind has ever experienced. It is only now and again that humanity has expressed its pain or passion in one of those strong audible throbs—as when, for instance, God put the _Marseillaise_ into the bursting heart of Rouget de Lille. One wonders how men live after writing such things. And as for Will, he never could bear ’The Coulin;’ he put his hand on her shoulder, and said: "Don’t play that any more, Dove. That isn’t the parting of love at all—it is the parting of death." "Ah, why should you say that?" she said, rising and creeping close to him, with tears suddenly starting to her eyes. "Why should you say that, Will? You don’t expect us to be parted _that_ way?" "Come," he said, leading her out of the drawing-room into the open air. "The man who wrote ’The Coulin’ had probably a broken heart; but that is no reason why we should break ours over his misery. My father is teaching Carry and Totty to fish for sticklebacks in the pond; shall we go and help them?" He had gone down to bid good-bye to St. Mary-Kirby and its people. The warm valley was very tempting at this time; but did not peremptory business call him away? For after the first yellow flush of the buttercups had died out of the meadows, they were growing white with the snow of the ox-eye; and the walnut trees were changing from brown to green; and instead of the lilacs, the bushy, red-budded honeysuckle was opening, and burdening the air with its perfume. Then they had fine weather just then; would it be finer on the Rhine? The white heat of midday was without haze. Sharp and clear were the white houses, specks only, on the far uplands; the fir-woods lay black against the blinding sky; and down here in the valley the long-grassed meadows seemed to grow dark in the heat, though there was a light shimmering of sunny green surrounding like a halo each pollard-willow by the riverside. In the clear pools the grey trout threw black shadows on the sand beneath, and lay motionless, with their eyes watching your every movement on the bank. St. Mary-Kirby lay hot and white among the green meadows, and by the side of the cool stream; but the people of St. Mary-Kirby prayed for rain to swell the fruit of their orchards and fields.