She looked me in the face.  Her cheeks were flushed with walking, and the wind had blown her hair into becoming confusion.

“Mr. Ducaine,” she said, “do you consider that Colonel Ray is your friend?”

“He has been very good to me,” I answered.

“There is something between you two.  What is it?”

“It is not my secret,” I told her.

“There is a secret, then,” she murmured.  “I knew it.  Is this why you do not wish me to marry him?”

“I have not said that I do not wish you to marry him,” I reminded her.

“Not in words.  You had no need to put it into words.”

“You are very young,” I said, “to marry any one for any other reason save the only true one.  Some day there might be some one else.”

She watched the flight of a seagull for a few moments—­watched it till its wings shone like burnished silver as it lit upon the sun-gilded sea.

“I do not think so,” she said, dreamily.  “I have never fancied myself caring very much for any one.  It is not easy, you know, for some of us.”

“And for some,” I murmured, “it is too easy.”

She looked at me curiously, but she had no suspicion as to the meaning of my words.

“I want you to tell me something,” she said, in a few minutes.  “Have you any other reason beyond this for objecting to my marriage with Colonel Ray?”

“If I have,” I answered slowly, “I cannot tell it you.  It is his secret, not mine.”

“You are mysterious!” she remarked.

“If I am,” I objected, “you must remember that you are asking me strange questions.”

“Colonel Ray is too honest,” she said, thoughtfully, “to keep anything from me which I ought to know.”

I changed the conversation.  After all I was a fool to have blundered into it.  We talked of other and lighter things.  I exerted myself to shake off the depression against which I had been struggling all the morning.  By degrees I think we both forgot some part of our troubles.  We walked home across the sandhills, climbing gradually higher and higher, until we reached the cliffs.  On all sides of us the coming change in the seasons seemed to be vigorously asserting itself.  The plovers were crying over the freshly-turned ploughed fields, a whole world of wild birds and insects seemed to have imparted a sense of movement and life to what only a few days ago had been a land of desolation, a country silent and winterbound.  Colour was asserting itself in all manner of places—­in the green of the sprouting grass, the shimmer of the sun upon the sea-stained sands, in the silvery blue of the Braster creeks.  Lady Angela drew a long breath of content as we paused for a moment at the summit of the cliffs.

“And you wonder,” she murmured, “that I left London for this!”

“Yes, I still wonder,” I answered.  “The beauties of this place are for the lonely—­I mean the lonely in disposition.  For you life in the busy places should just be opening all her fascinations.  It is only when one is disappointed in the more human life that one comes back to Nature.”