It was the evening of her arrival at Broadstairs, and she was walking along by the shore, Spartan pacing majestically beside her. The after-glow of the sunken sun rested on the calm sea, and little waves, dimpling one over the other in long, fine lines, broke on the pebbly beach with a soft sound as of children’s laughter. Everything was very peaceful and beautiful, and by degrees her troubled mind became soothed and gently attuned to the symphonic vibrations of the eternal pulse of Nature for ever beating in answer to the voice of God. Some strong emotion in her own soul suddenly stirred and spoke as it were aloud in accents half-reproachful, half-consoling. ‘What is it you have lost?’ demanded the inward voice. ‘Love? But what do you understand by love? The transitory gleam of light that falls upon a fleck of foam and passes? Or the eternal glory of a deepening day whose summer splendours shall not cease? All that is of the earth must perish; choose therefore that which is of Heaven, and for which you were destined when God kindled first within your woman’s soul the fires of aspiration and endeavour! Nature is unrolled before you like an open book; humanity, with all its sufferings, needs and hopes, is here for you to help and comfort; self is a nothing in what you have to do; your earthly good, your earthly love, your earthly hopes are as the idle wind in the countings of eternity! Sail by the compass of the Spirit of God within you; and haply out of darkness, light shall come!’ With dreamy, half-tearful eyes she looked out upon the darkening sea; the sense or a great solitude, a vast loneliness, encompassed her; and almost in unconscious appeal she laid her small, delicate, bare hand on Spartan’s shaggy head, who received the caress with a worshipping reverence in his brown eyes. ‘It is so hard, Spartan!’ she murmured, ‘So hard for a woman to be quite alone in the world! To work on, solitary, wearing a bitter laurel-crown that makes one’s brow ache; to be deprived, for no fault of one’s own, of all the kisses and endearments so freely bestowed on foolish, selfish, ungrateful, and frequently unchaste women—to be set apart in the cold Courts of Fame,—a white statue, with frozen lips and eyes staring down the illimitable ways of Death—Oh God! is not an hour of love worth all this chill renown!’ Tears sprang to her eyes and blotted out the view of the darkening heavens and quiet sea. She turned blindly to move onward, when Spartan suddenly sprang forward with a deep bark of pleasure, and a man’s voice, low, and trembling with emotion, said hastily,— ‘Lady Carlyon, may I speak to you? I came after you from town. I thought I should find you here!’ And looking up amazed, she found herself face to face with Paul Valdis. *CHAPTER VIII*