So her father turned to his "Times;" but he was very comfortable, and the atmosphere was a sleepy one. His voice began to waver, the paper slipped from his fingers, and a gentle snore told Sidney that further reading was over for the present. She dropped her work in her lap and gazed dreamily over the water; shadows gathered and deepened in her eyes. Then she sprang up and slipped quietly down some broad steps close by. There was a light boat moored to the stone wall. With deft fingers she loosened the rope, stepped in, and taking up the light pair of oars, rowed gently away from the garden and down the river towards the sea. Then, alone at last, she raised her head with a passionate gesture. "Oh, I can't bear it! I can't bear it! What is life to me now? It's finished—absolutely done! There is nothing to hope for, nothing to wait for! Nothing will ever come to me now!" She went back in thought to the years that stretched behind her. One figure, one personality, was prominent in them all. Archie Hughes had been a playmate first, then a friend, then a lover. She and he latterly had been separated by distance, but it had only made the future brighter to her, for would it not bring them together? In all she planned, Archie took a prominent part. She did not now seem able to adjust her life without him. Never had she looked forward to the years stretching away in front of her without a happy thrill, the certain hope that she would have Archie to advise her, comfort her, and be her stand-by. Sidney was no modern young woman with an assurance and independence of thought which made a single life appear so attractive. She had grown-up amongst men who still held chivalrous ideas of women. She was accustomed to little attentions from them, and perhaps queened it over them rather more than was good for her. "Oh," she moaned, as she pulled in her oars and let herself drift for a little with the tide, bowing her head in her hands in abject misery, "if it had been anyone but Archie! He must have tired of me. Perhaps I showed him too much how I cared. And yet when he wished me good-bye, he whispered, 'Good-bye, little wifie!' What can have happened to make him change so?" She recalled his letters; but a pang went through her as she remembered how few and far between they had been of late. It was bitter to her to feel that he had flung her aside without a word, without giving her any reason for doing so. "Perhaps," she soliloquised, "he was tired of waiting for me. Men are not like women. I tried his patience. But how secure I felt! How implicitly I trusted him!" Then she sat up and pushed her hair off her forehead, and the proud little poise of her head told that there was still some spirit left in her.