On Christian’s face was the quiet smile of one who knows that she has only to turn her eyes to see what she wishes to see; of one whose possessions are safe under her hand.  She looked at Harz with that possessive smile.  But as into the brain of one turning in his bed grim fancies will suddenly leap up out of warm nothingness, so there leaped into her mind the memory of that long ago dawn, when he had found her kneeling by Mr. Treffry’s body.  She seemed to see again the dead face, so gravely quiet, and furrowless.  She seemed to see her lover and herself setting forth silently along the river wall where they had first met; sitting down, still silent, beneath the poplar-tree where the little bodies of the chafers had lain strewn in the Spring.  To see the trees changing from black to grey, from grey to green, and in the dark sky long white lines of cloud, lighting to the south like birds; and, very far away, rosy peaks watching the awakening of the earth.  And now once again, after all that time, she felt her spirit shrink away from his; as it had shrunk in that hour, when she had seemed hateful to herself.  She remembered the words she had spoken:  “I have no heart left.  You’ve torn it in two between you.  Love is all self—­I wanted him to die.”  She remembered too the raindrops on the vines like a million tiny lamps, and the throstle that began singing.  Then, as dreams die out into warm nothingness, recollection vanished, and the smile came back to her lips.

She took out a letter.

“....O Chris!  We are really coming; I seem to be always telling it to myself, and I have told Scruff many times, but he does not care, because he is getting old.  Miss Naylor says we shall arrive for breakfast, and that we shall be hungry, but perhaps she will not be very hungry, if it is rough.  Papa said to me:  ‘Je serai inconsolable, mais inconsolable!’ But I think he will not be, because he is going to Vienna.  When we are come, there will be nobody at Villa Rubein; Aunt Constance has gone a fortnight ago to Florence.  There is a young man at her hotel; she says he will be one of the greatest playwriters in England, and she sent me a play of his to read; it was only a little about love, I did not like it very much....  O Chris!  I think I shall cry when I see you.  As I am quite grown up, Miss Naylor is not to come back with me; sometimes she is sad, but she will be glad to see you, Chris. She seems always sadder when it is Spring.  Today I walked along the wall; the little green balls of wool are growing on the poplars already, and I saw one chafer; it will not be long before the cherry blossom comes; and I felt so funny, sad and happy together, and once I thought that I had wings and could fly away up the valley to Meran—­but I had none, so I sat on the bench where we sat the day we took the pictures, and I thought and thought; there was nothing came to me in my thoughts, but all was sweet and a little noisy, and rather sad; it was like the buzzing of the chafer, in my head; and now I feel so tired and all my blood is running up and down me.  I do not mind, because I know it is the Spring.