“She was dear to us, and we shall miss her always,” the Faraway Woman said that night.... She would never come back. It was a parting, but the very lightness of it moved them. They wondered if they had done all they could. “I’m so glad the means were not at hand for her to paint the stone-work,” Bellair said firmly. “I’m afraid she would think we lack interest,” the woman added, as she glanced at the smoky beams of the ceiling. The years had softened them perfectly. “She wanted them washed the very first thing,” said Bellair, “and varnished. If she had stayed much longer we would have been forced to paint something.” In the days that followed, a softness and summery bloom came continually to the Faraway Woman’s eyes. His heart quickened when she turned to him. They moved in and out from the cottage to grounds, again and again. “It’s unreal to me,” she would say. “I wonder if it will ever seem ours? I know it won’t, while you are away. I could live here fifty years until I seemed a part of the cottage and grass and trees, and I would feel a pilgrim resting----” “It is part of you now, and always has been,” he said. “You are at home on high ground and you must have the sea-distance. They belong to you. I think that is what made you so hard for me to understand.” “Was I hard for you?” “I was so fresh from the little distances and the short-sight of things--from looking down----” “I wonder if any one ever was so willing to be seen on his worst side?” she asked. “I really believe you know very little about yourself.... He saw--the real side.” “He saw good everywhere,” said Bellair. “... I wonder why I was strange to you at first?” she repeated, after a moment. “You were not strange to me.” “Not when I spent so much time at the great cane chair?” “No. You seemed to be studying. I could see that you didn’t belong there. You appeared to be interested in it all--as if he were a part of the ship----” “And you didn’t seem to belong at all to my eyes,” he told her. “You belonged out in the distances of ocean. You came closer and closer during the days in the open boat--but here you belong. It seems to me that you have come home--and how I wish I could stay, too.” “I wish you could stay--but I know that there is unfinished work in New York.” “I wonder how _he_ knew?” Bellair questioned. “He saw very clearly. He was not flesh at all--that last day----” “After the night--when he prayed.... You saw him that night?” “Yes.”