through the town and came to the wall by the meeting of the roads, where he stopped.  The booming of the sea was audible.  The dark-blue mass of the mountains rose against the paler blue of the sky.  There was no moon, but myriads of stars, and lights were anchored up and down in the dark waves of earth all round him.  He had meant to go back, but the single light of the Ambroses’ villa had now become three separate lights, and he was tempted to go on.  He might as well make sure that Rachel was still there.  Walking fast, he soon stood by the iron gate of their garden, and pushed it open; the outline of the house suddenly appeared sharply before his eyes, and the thin column of the verandah cutting across the palely lit gravel of the terrace.  He hesitated.  At the back of the house some one was rattling cans.  He approached the front; the light on the terrace showed him that the sitting-rooms were on that side.  He stood as near the light as he could by the corner of the house, the leaves of a creeper brushing his face.  After a moment he could hear a voice.  The voice went on steadily; it was not talking, but from the continuity of the sound it was a voice reading aloud.  He crept a little closer; he crumpled the leaves together so as to stop their rustling about his ears.  It might be Rachel’s voice.  He left the shadow and stepped into the radius of the light, and then heard a sentence spoken quite distinctly.

“And there we lived from the year 1860 to 1895, the happiest years of my parents’ lives, and there in 1862 my brother Maurice was born, to the delight of his parents, as he was destined to be the delight of all who knew him.”

The voice quickened, and the tone became conclusive rising slightly in pitch, as if these words were at the end of the chapter.  Hewet drew back again into the shadow.  There was a long silence.  He could just hear chairs being moved inside.  He had almost decided to go back, when suddenly two figures appeared at the window, not six feet from him.

“It was Maurice Fielding, of course, that your mother was engaged to,” said Helen’s voice.  She spoke reflectively, looking out into the dark garden, and thinking evidently as much of the look of the night as of what she was saying.

“Mother?” said Rachel.  Hewet’s heart leapt, and he noticed the fact.  Her voice, though low, was full of surprise.

“You didn’t know that?” said Helen.

“I never knew there’d been any one else,” said Rachel.  She was clearly surprised, but all they said was said low and inexpressively, because they were speaking out into the cool dark night.

“More people were in love with her than with any one I’ve ever known,” Helen stated.  “She had that power—­she enjoyed things.  She wasn’t beautiful, but—­I was thinking of her last night at the dance.  She got on with every kind of person, and then she made it all so amazingly—­funny.”

It appeared that Helen was going back into the past, choosing her words deliberately, comparing Theresa with the people she had known since Theresa died.