“Why must there always be such a distance between us, Miriam dear?  Even when I seem so near to you as this, what a deep black gulf really separates us!”

“You were once on my side of it” said Miriam, her voice softened.  “How did you pass to the other?”

“How could I tell you?  No one read me lectures, or taught me hard arguments.  The change came insensibly, like passing out of a dream into the light of morning.  I followed where my nature led, and my thoughts about everything altered.  I don’t know how it might have been if I had lived on with you.  But my happiness was not there.”

“Happiness!” murmured the other, scornfully.

“A word you don’t, won’t understand.  Yet to me it means much.  Who knows?  Perhaps there may come a day when I shall look back upon it, and see it as empty of satisfaction as it now seems to you.  But more likely that I shall live to look back in sorrow for its loss.”

The dialogue became such as they had held more than once of late, fruitless it seemed, only saddening to both.  And Cecily was to-day saddened by it beyond her wont; her excessive gaiety yielded to a dejection which passed indeed, but for a while made her very unlike herself, silent, with troubled eyes.

“I had one valid excuse for coming to see you to-day,” she said, when gaiety and dejection had both gone by.  “Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw seriously think of going to Rome at the end of next week, and they wish to have another day at Pompeii.  They would like it so much if you would go with them.  If you do, I also will; we shall make four for a carriage, and drive there, and come back by train.”

“What day?”

“To-morrow, if it be fine.  Let me take them your assent.”

Miriam agreed.

On Monday morning, as arranged, she was driving down to the Mergellina, when, with astonishment, she saw her brother standing by the roadside, beckoning to her.  The carriage stopped, and he came up to speak.

“Where are you off to?” he asked.

“You are still here?”

“I haven’t been well.  Didn’t feel able to go yesterday.  I was just coming to see you.”

“Not well, Reuben?  Why didn’t you come before?”

“I couldn’t.  I want to speak to you.  Where are you going?”

She told him the plan for the day.  Elgar turned aside, and meditated.

“I’ll see you there—­at Pompeii somewhere.  It’ll be on my way.”

“I had rather not go at all.  I’ll ask them to excuse me; Mrs. Lessingham will perhaps take my place, and—­”

“No!  I’ll see you at Pompeii.  I shall have no difficulty you.”

Miriam looked at him anxiously.

“I don’t wish you to meet us there, Reuben.”

“And I do wish!  Let me have my way, Miriam.  Say nothing about me, and let the meeting seem by chance.”

“I can’t do that.  You make yourself ridiculous, after—­”

“Let me judge for myself.  Go on, or you’ll be late.”