"We'd get out of the train," he began, "and smell the sea; and then we should smell a fresh and wonderful wind, and we should know it came from the mountains, and we'd hurry along the road. We're hurrying, Theresa, to the place where that wind was born. It's the spring, I think. There are primroses in the hedges, lots of them by the stream, but I expect we shall see some snow on the hills. It lies late in the gullies, and at night it falls up there, when it is almost warm in the valleys. It's a long walk, but we're going very fast because we are so eager, and now we're turning a corner, and the wind comes more smartly, stealing our breath, and it is hard work to raise our heads against it to see----" Theresa's parted lips drooped sharply, without warning, and stopped his speech. "Don't!" she cried imploringly. "Don't tell me! I--I don't think I like this game. Pretending!" She hid her face and indistinctly murmured: "I don't think I can bear to talk about it." "My dear!" She looked up: there were tears in her eyes. He blinked. "My dear," he repeated helplessly. "What is it?" She shook her head, laughing, and yielding to the persuasion of his hand, she sat on the arm of his chair, and leaned against him. "I'm silly," she said. But he would not allow that: he triumphed in her sensibility. "No, no," he said. The pressure of his encircling arm assured her that he understood, and she did not try to check her weeping, for she enjoyed it, and all the nameless troubles of her youth seemed to be finding solace. She was surprised at her emotion, and became interested in it: thought dammed the flood, and with the back of her hand she wiped her eyes. Edward Webb continued to hold her firmly while she stared before her, not guiltless of an occasional sniff which had for him the pathos of a cry. Considering herself, she decided that she was strange. Why had she silenced her father? Her glance fell, broodingly, to the papers on his desk. Was it because the hills were her religion, her love for them her form of worship? She liked the notion and saw herself enhanced by it. Her heart beat a little faster; there were depths in her she had not sounded, and her blurred gaze cleared itself in this excitement. Her mind looked inward while her eyes mechanically followed the lines of her father's writing. They were partly concealed by blotting-paper, but some of them she read over and over again, making accompaniment to her thoughts, until their meaning flashed and blinded her to all else. They were words of love, brilliant, coloured words that startled, horrified her. She had read such words in print, but to see them in her father's handwriting seemed to strike life out of her.