They stood still, staring at the sunset. A sweet, damp smell was coming up from the ground; there had been a little shower. The sea lay very quiet and vast, flecked here and there with afterglow. Down below them the lights of Seabourne sprang into being, one by one; they looked small and unnaturally bright. The ugly homes from which they shone were mercifully hidden in the dusk. Only their lights appeared, elusive, beckoning, never quite still. Around them little hidden specks of life were making indefinable noises; a blur of rustlings, chirpings, buzzings. They were very busy, these hidden people, with their secret activities. Presently it would be night; already the moon was showing palely opposite the sunset. Elizabeth turned her gaze away from the sky and looked at Joan. The girl was standing upright with her head a little back. She had taken off her hat, and the queer light fell slantwise across her broad forehead, and dipped into her wide open eyes that held in their depths a look of fear. Her lips were parted as if to speak, but no words came. She stretched out a hand, without looking at Elizabeth, as though groping for protection. Elizabeth took the hand and held it firmly in her own. "Are you frightened, Joan?" she asked softly. "A little; how did you know?" "Your eyes looked scared. Why are you frightened? I thought you were so confident just now." "I don't know, but it's all so strange, somehow. I think it's the newness I told you about that frightens me, now I come to think of it. You seem new. Do you feel new, Elizabeth?" Elizabeth dropped the hand and turned away. "Not particularly," she said; "I'm getting rather old for that sort of thing; if I let myself feel new I might forget how old I'm getting. No, I don't think I'd better feel too new, or you might get more frightened still; you told me you were frightened of me once, do you remember?" "Oh, rot! I could never be frightened of you, Elizabeth; you're just a bit of me." "Am I? Well, come on or we'll be late, and I think I'm catching cold." "Let's walk arm and arm again," Joan pleaded, like a schoolgirl begging a favour, and Elizabeth acquiesced with a short laugh. 3 Milly was obviously not well; she coughed perpetually, and Joan sent for the doctor. He came and sounded her chest and lungs, but found no alarming symptoms. Mrs. Ogden protested fretfully that Joan was always over-fussy when there was nothing to fuss about, and quite unusually indifferent when there was real cause for anxiety. She either could not or would not see that her younger daughter looked other than robust.