Meanwhile Denia's smiles, as the spring days lengthened, began to come and go more frequently, and there were times when some quaint remark on Fanny's part would elicit a little burst of rippling laughter and a gay rejoinder. The cloud which had for so many months overshadowed her young life was beginning to melt and disappear. Soon the past, with all that it held of pleasure or of pain, would for her have become nothing more than a faint memory which, as time went on, would intrude itself less and less often upon her. Hers was one of those natures which no calamity can crush for long. Her heart was like one of those quiet tarns, deep-buried among the hills, high above which the tempests rave while they lie softly darkling below. She was happy as the birds are happy, because it was not in her to be otherwise: that, at least, was how Fanny Sudlow summed her up in her own thoughts. But Denia's talk, however wide it might range, or however apparently careless it might be, was always strictly impersonal. Herself and her concerns were kept studiously in the background, and Fanny's hand was not the one to try to drag them to the front. One afternoon, however, either of set purpose or because for a moment her usual caution had deserted her, Denia said to Miss Sudlow: "Don't these sunny, sweet-breathing spring days, when everything seems bursting with life, often make you long to have wings that you might fly away somewhere--anywhere? They do me. Oh! I am not going to bury myself in this place for ever, let who will think it. I have ideas--intentions. As soon as my husband's affairs have been wound up and I know for certain what my portion of the estate will amount to, I shall leave here and for ever. I have friends in London, and to them I shall go first of all. Afterwards---- But that is no matter." It was a hot close evening in mid May. There had scarcely been a breath of air all day and the night had brought no coolness. Fanny Sudlow sat in the dark at the open casement of her bedroom window, her hair unbound and a handkerchief soaked in vinegar laid across her forehead. She was suffering from one of those distressing headaches to which she had been more or less liable all her life. She heard the clock of St. Mary's strike eleven, and still she sat on, knowing of old that it was useless for her to go to bed till the pain should in some measure have abated. Her window looked into a corner of the old garden, in which, just then, the moon shone silvery bright. She had not been out of doors all day; her room felt so stifling and the garden looked so cool and inviting, that a strong desire came over her to get away from the close atmosphere of the house and pace its silent walks awhile in search of that nepenthe she was unable to find indoors. It was a desire which she let have its way.