During her illness, Rachel had been besieged by feverish thoughts. Not a phase of the situation but she had gone over innumerable times. Finally her resolution was taken: she would see Emil no more. The decision was an arduous one and she raged to make it. Love for one man, overmastering love, as Nature wills it, was in conflict with unswerving loyalty to another; and this latter feeling likewise had its roots in the very foundation of her character, so that her woman's heart had been for a season a disputed field, and the conflict had protracted her illness. But when she rose at last, pitiful tender, heroic,--all woman in that she dreamed she had immolated the feeling that threatened the peace of her husband--lo, the situation awaiting her put her plans to confusion. Her husband's unexpected move had made her course a difficult if not an impossible one. For more than three weeks by employing every stratagem, she succeeded in avoiding the inventor, and when the housemaid brought word, as she did on several occasions, that both Emil and Annie had come over to call on her, she pleaded weariness and refused to see them. But as her strength returned, this excuse failed, and she spent many hours with Emily, who had been persuaded to remain and carry on her trade of toy-making in an unused room of the house. Had Simon permitted it, Rachel would have returned to the city, but both her husband and the doctor opposed the move on the ground of her recent illness. It was a state of things which could not endure. One morning Emil came upon Rachel sitting on the sand. Worn out by her efforts to avoid him, beyond turning her face obstinately in the other direction, she made no attempt to escape. As he advanced he examined her with his laughing eyes. "So I've found you at last!" he cried joyously. After a moment, because there was nothing else to do, she turned her face to his. "But you're not much of an invalid, are you?" he cried an surprise, and seated himself not far off. "You look," he said, indicating the sea, "as strong as those waves." Hot blushes were uncommon with her, but now the unreasoning colour mounted full tide beneath her tanned skin. "Yes," she assented coldly, "I'm quite myself now;" and she began taking the sand into her hands and letting it trickle between her fingers. "Well, why haven't you been over to see my new workroom?" he demanded in a different tone, as he followed these movements. "You don't take much interest in your neighbours, it strikes me." She steadily regarded the sea. "So far I haven't done anything," she said in a low voice, and then added, as if the words were forced from her, "I shall go back to the city when the doctor will allow it." "What would be the sense of that?" he demanded in amazement. "Why it's fine here! Just the place for you. Is it possible you don't like it?" Rachel's lip curled slightly. "Where's Annie?" she asked after a moment's pause.