Anne saw the lovers, but they did not see her, as she ran down the steps cut in the turf to the little bridge across the trout stream. She had left Mrs Trefusis composed into a resigned nap, and she felt at liberty to carry her aching spirit to seek comfort and patience by the brook. Anne, the restrained, disciplined, dignified woman of the world, threw herself down on her face in the short, sun-warm grass. Is the heart ever really tamed? As the years pass we learn to keep it behind bolts and bars. We marshal it forth on set occasions, to work manacled under our eyes, and then goad it back to its cell again. But is it ever anything but a caged Arab of the desert, a wild fierce prisoner in chains, a captive Samson with shorn locks which grow again, who may one day snap his fetters, and pull down the house over our heads. Anne set her teeth. Her passionate heart beat hard against the kind bosom of the earth. How we return to her, our Mother Earth, when life is too difficult or too beautiful for us! How we fling ourselves upon her breast, upon her solitude, finding courage to encounter joy, insight to bear sorrow. First faint foreshadowing of the time when we, "short-lived as fire, and fading as the dew," shall go back to her entirely. Anne lay very still. She did not cry. She knew better than that. Tears are for the young. She hid her convulsed face in her hands, and shuddered violently from time to time. How long was she to bear it? How long was she to drag herself by sheer force through the days, endless hour by hour? How long was she to hate the dawn? How long was she to endure this intermittent agony, which released her only to return? Was there to be no reprieve from the invasion of this one thought? Was there no escape from this man? Was not her old friend the robin on his side? The meadowsweet feathered the hedgerow. The white clover was in the grass, together with the little purple orchid. Were they not all his confederates? Had he bribed the robin to sing of him, and the scent in the white clover against her cheek to goad her back to acute remembrance of him, and the pine-trees to speak continually of him? "He is rich enough," said poor Anne to herself, with something between a laugh and a sob. But he had not bribed the brook. Tormented spirits ere now have walked in dry places, seeking rest and finding none. But has any outcast from happiness sought rest by running water, and found it not? CHAPTER IV "I have not sinned against the God of Love." --EDMUND GOSSE.