Again he felt a touch of compunction. She had so clearly grasped the situation; she was so evidently sorry for him, so conscientious, even if mistaken, in her efforts to make amends, that he found her positively pathetic. He answered humbly that he would be delighted if she would be so good. Then, conscientiously again, she left him. He watched her tall figure departing with energetic strides, and he decided that Miss Tancred was not so bad out of doors, but that she needed a large background. The next morning he had the grace to remind her of her promise. They started at a rapid pace. Durant left the paraphernalia of his art behind him by way of intimating delicately that the hour was hers. Miss Tancred was evidently prepared for vigorous walking. She was dressed suitably and inoffensively in brown holland. She took him up a long, gradually rising hill to where a group of firs stood on an isolated mound. Here Miss Tancred paused, with tilted profile, sniffing the ambient air. "This," she said, "is the highest point in the county; there is always a fresh breeze here; to-day you can smell the sea." "Impossible; we must be right in the very center of England, about a hundred miles from the nearest coast." "You can hear it, then. Shut your eyes and listen." He obeyed. The wind moved and the firs gave out their voice. He opened his eyes and glanced at Miss Tancred. She was leaning up against a fir; her eyes looked straight past him into the distance; the wind had loosened the hair about her forehead; her lips were parted, her eyes shone; there was an eagerness in her face he had not yet seen there. It was as if a dead woman had been suddenly made alive before him. She was gazing and listening. "If you've never been out of Wickshire, where have you heard the sea?" She answered curtly, "I don't know where I've heard it"; then added, as if by way of apology for her manner, "Do you like it?" "Immensely." "Then you must come up whenever you want to. You can always be alone here." She spoke as if she were giving him the freedom of her private sanctuary. "Have you any sketches of those places you've been to abroad?" "Sketches? Any amount." "Have you brought them with you?" He blushed. He had brought many sketches in the hope of showing them to a wealthy godfather and an admiring god-sister. "Some--a few." "I wish you'd show them to me." "I shall be delighted." He blushed again, this time for pleasure. With the desire to bestow a little of it, he asked rashly, "Do you sketch, Miss Tancred? I saw some water-colors----" "They were my mother's. I do nothing." "Oh, I see." (They were going home now.) "I was wondering what on earth you found to do here." "I? A great many things. Business chiefly. My father is secretary to the Primrose League. I write all his letters for him." "That's one way of being secretary to the Primrose League."