joy, as though she had been a strange wild bird escaping from captivity to wing her way westward to the open spaces by the sea.  London had frightened her.  Its crowded vastness had suffocated her, its indifference had appalled her.  She had felt so hopelessly alone there; far lonelier than she had ever been in Cornwall or Norfolk.  Nature could be brutal, but never indifferent.  She could be friendly—­sometimes.  The sea and the sky had whispered loving greetings to her, but not London.  There was nothing but a hideous and blank indifference there.  She was glad to get away—­away from the endless rows of shops and houses, from the unceasing throngs of indifferent people, back to the lonely moors of Cornwall, to look down from the rocks at the sea, and breathe the keen gusty air.

As the journey advanced and the train swept farther west she became dull, languid, almost inert.  Lack of food and the previous night’s exposure induced in her a feeling of giddiness which at times had in it something of the nature of delirium.  In this state her mind turned persistently to Thalassa, and the object of her return to him.  She was struggling towards him, up great heights, under a nightmare burden.  She seemed to see him standing there with his hands outstretched, ready to lift the burden off her shoulders if she could only reach him.  Then she was back in the kitchen at Flint House, watching him bending over his lamps, listening to the wicked old song he used to sing—­

    “The devil and me we went away to sea,
       In the old brig ’Lizbeth-Jane....”

The train caught up the refrain and thundered it into her tired head ...  “Went away to sea, went away to sea, In the old brig ’Lizbeth-Jane.”  And, listening to it, she fell into a dazed slumber.

She awoke with a start to find that it was getting dusk and the train was running smoothly through South Cornwall.  As she looked out of the window a grey corpse of a hill seemed to rise out of the sea.  It was Mount St. Michael.  Then she caught a glimpse of Carn Brea and the purple moors.  The people in the carriage began to collect light luggage and put on coats and wraps.  The next moment the train came to a standstill at Penzance station.

She clung to the safety of the throng in passing through the barrier, fearing most the St. Fair wagonette which might be drawn up outside.  She was not known in Penzance, but the driver of the wagonette might recognize her.  But Mr. Crows, indifferent to shillings, had not yet arrived.  Sisily hurried past a group scanning the distant heights for the gaunt outline of the descending cab, like shipwrecked mariners on the look-out for a sail.

She reached the moor road by a short cut through, the back part of the town, and set out for Flint House in the velvety shadows of the early gloaming.

It had been raining, but the rain had ceased.  The sun, hidden through a long grey day, shone with dying brilliance in a patch of horizon blue, gilding the wet road, and making the wayside puddles glitter like mirrors.  A soddened little bird twittered joyfully in the hedge, casting a round black eye at her as she passed.  The moors, carpeted with purple, stretched all around her, glistening, wet, beautiful.