his involuntary adoration of her beauty legitimate. He could never take his eyes off her, and she began to amuse herself with him and try her coquetries upon his oversensitiveness. He suffered terribly. She was caught in her own wiles, and she too suffered. It was a relief to both when, the first year, they parted. The next year she was not so lovely, and had lost or disguised her wildness. It was not long before he discovered that he could rouse it in her. Then began their meetings in the woods. At the thought of her now his affection for Ann, his warm regard for Kilner faded away. They were meaningless without her. He knew not where she was. His only clue was Rachel. Cathleen, too, might go to that house. He would wait until she came. If the worst came to the worst, he would ask Rachel. He must satisfy himself that he was not covering that sweet past with illusions. The meeting with Rachel had brought it all flooding back to bring him to acute discontent with the present. It was one thing to sigh sentimentally over happy days. To do that was to obscure them. It was quite another thing to have happy days demanding egress through his life, growing through the thick-set years like a tree through a wall. He stole away directly Kilner and Ann were out of sight, found he had only a sovereign, and turned into the tobacconist's round the corner for change. It was also a news-agent's, and he bought a newspaper and, as he was borne along by the bus, read of his aunt's death. Strange, he thought, that all his thoughts should be clustered round her house just then. The wise old woman, with her dear foibles: what had her long life been? The end of it was sweet and true and full of grace. Not only his mother had been helped in her troubles. That he knew. The old lady's meager income became supple and elastic under the touch of generous charity that never spoiled its gifts with the demand for gratitude. She once said to René: "Better be ungrateful than cramped with gratitude." Read Dante upside down she might in her old age, but she could quote him from her heart: Ed io a lui: Io mi son un che, quando Amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo che ditta dentro, vo significando. She had made René learn a little Italian and get that by heart. It began now to have a meaning for him, and he repeated it to himself as he came near the road in which stood Rachel's house. He took up his stand at the corner and waited. He had been there nearly an hour when a car drove up and a spruce, middle-aged gentleman got out, walked up the path, and admitted himself with a key. Rachel's husband? Far too old for her. Another hour's waiting. A young woman came along the road. René thought for a moment it was she, and his heart leaped. She did not see him. She turned in at the gate, knocked at the door, and was admitted. No, he decided, that was not Cathleen.