difficult life, what she had dreamed it when she went off; all woods and forests and music ... happy Hermann and Dorothea happiness in the summer twilight of German villages. It had become that now. The heart of a German town was that, making one a little homesick for it.... The impulse to go and the going had been right. It was part of something ... with a meaning; perhaps there is happiness only in the things one does deliberately, without a visible reason; drifting off to Germany, because it called; coming here to-day ... in freedom. If you are free you are alive ... nothing that happens in the part of your life that is not free, the part you do and are paid for, is alive. To-day, because I am free I am the same person as I was when I was there, but much stronger and happier because I know it. As long as I can sometimes feel like this nothing has mattered. Life is a chain of happy moments that cannot die. "Damn those boys--they woke me up." "Did they Mag; so they did me; did you dream?" Perhaps Mag would say something ... but people never seemed to think anything of "dropping off to sleep." "I drempt that I dwelt in Marble Halls; you awake von Bohlen?" "I don't quite know." "But speaking _tent_atively...." "A long lean mizzerable tentative----" "I perceive that you are still asleep. Shall I sing it--"I _durr-e-_empt I da-_we_-elt in ma-ha-har-ble halls." "Cooooo--oooo--er Bill." The response sounded faintly from far away on the cliffs. "Cooooo--ooo--er Micky" warbled Miriam. "I like that noise. When they are further off I shall try doing it very loud to get the proper crack." "I think we'd better leave her here, don't you von Bohlen?" Was it nearly tea-time? Would either of them soon mention tea? The beauty of the rocks had faded. Yet, if they ceased being clever and spoke of the beauty, it would not come back. The weariness of keeping things up went on. When the gingernuts and lemonade were at last set out upon the sand, they shamed Miriam with the sense of her long preoccupation with them. The girls had not thought of them. They never seemed to flag in their way of talking. Perhaps it was partly their regular meals. It was dreadful always to be the first one to want food.... But she was happier down here with them than she would have been alone. * * * * * Going alone for a moment in the twilight across the little scrub, as soon as she had laughed enough over leaving the room in the shelter of a gorse bush, she recovered the afternoon's happiness. There was a little fence, bricks were lying scattered about and half-finished houses stood along the edge of the scrub. But a soft land-breeze was coming across the common carrying the scent of gorse; the silence of the sea reminded her of its presence beyond the cliffs; her own gorse-scented breeze, and silent sea and sunlit cliffs. CHAPTER XXIII 1