Helen was the first to break the silence.

“I am glad you have brought me here,” she said; “I shall never grumble now at not being able to afford a fortnight in the country.  This is better than anything else.”

“It has always been my summer holiday to come here,” he said.  “When I first came I was like you, young and hopeful, and I had wonderful visions of what I intended to do and to be.  Here it was I made a vow that I would become a great painter, and win for myself a resting place in this very abbey.  There is humour in the situation, is there not?”

“I don’t like to hear you say that,” she answered.  “It is not always possible for us to fulfil all our ambitions.  Still, it is better to have had them, and failed of them, than not to have had them at all.”

“Possibly,” he replied, coldly.  Then he added, “I wish you would tell me about yourself.  You have always interested me.”

“I have nothing to tell you about myself,” she answered, frankly.  “I am alone in the world, without friends and without relations.  The very name I use is not a real name.  I was a foundling.  At times I am sorry I do not belong to any one, and at other times I am glad.  You know I am fond of books and of art, so my life is not altogether empty; and I find my pleasure in hard work.  When I saw you at the gallery I wished to know you, and I asked one of the students who you were.  He told me you were a misanthrope.  Then I did not care so much about knowing you, until one day you spoke to me about my painting, and that was the beginning of our friendship.”

“Forty years ago,” he said, sadly, “the friend of my boyhood deceived me.  I had not thought it possible that he could be false to me.  He screened himself behind me, and became prosperous and respected at the expense of my honour.  I vowed I would never again make a friend.  A few years later, when I was beginning to hold up my head, the woman whom I loved deceived me.  Then I put from me all affection and all love.  Greater natures than mine are better able to bear these troubles, but my heart contracted and withered up.”

He paused for a moment, many recollections overpowering him.  Then he went on telling her the history of his life, unfolding to her the story of his hopes and ambitions, describing to her the very home where he was born, and the dark-eyed sister whom he had loved, and with whom he had played over the daisied fields, and through the carpeted woods, and all among the richly tinted bracken.  One day he was told she was dead, and that he must never speak her name; but he spoke it all the day and all the night,—­Beryl, nothing but Beryl,—­and he looked for her in the fields and in the woods and among the bracken.  It seemed as if he had unlocked the casket of his heart, closed for so many years, and as if all the memories of the past and all the secrets of his life were rushing out, glad to be free once more, and grateful for the open air of sympathy.