The words filled North with a vague uncanny horror. He struggled after normal, everyday words, but for a moment none came. He knew the girl was overwrought, suffering from strain, but what was it that had looked at him out of those vehement, passionate eyes? “Look here, Vi,” he said at length, striving to speak naturally, “you are just imagining things. Can’t you take a pull on yourself and go easy for a bit? You’re overdoing it, you know, and these sort of ideas are the result.” “I’m sorry, father.” She bent sideways, letting her head rest against his shoulder, and seeking his hand, held it close. Such a demonstration was foreign to her with him. When she was small, some queer form of jealousy on her mother’s part had come between them. He felt shy and awkward. “I don’t know what made me break out like that,” she went on. “I think it must have been coming back here and seeing everything just the same as it used to be before the war came. Until to-day, when I’ve been down it’s been so quiet and different, with no parties, and nothing going on. Now it’s gone back like everything else is going back—only I cannot.” “Nothing goes back, dear,” answered North. “It’s not the same for anyone really. Not even for the quiet young people who’ll come and play here without a trouble as you used to. But there’s always the interest of going forward. If we’ve suffered, at least we’ve gained experience from it, which is knowledge. And there’s always some work to be done for every season that could not be done sooner or later. That helps, I think.” “Dear old father,” she said softly. “We used not to be really great friends in the old days. But now somehow you’re the only person I find any comfort in. I think perhaps it is because we are both putting up a hard fight.” “Don’t forget the spice of life is battle, Vi, as Stevenson has it. I’m inclined to think, though”—he spoke slowly as one envolving a thought new to him—“I’m inclined to think we sometimes confuse bitterness and rebellion with it. That’s not clean fighting. My dear, put that hate you speak of away from you, if you can—and have nothing to do with bitterness—they are forces which can only make for evil.” There was a little pause. “I don’t think I can, father. It’s part of me. Sometimes I think it’s all me, and sometimes I’m frightened.” “Look here, Vi,” said North, struggling with a disinclination to make the proposition that was in his mind, a disinclination that he felt was ridiculous, “I wish you would go over to Thorpe and get to know Miss Seer.” Violet sat up and looked at him with wide-open eyes. “But why? I should hate it!” she exclaimed. “It would remind me—oh, of so many things! It would make me feel even worse——”