Sylvia went slowly past the house and down the path leading to the wild, deserted bit of garden.  She saw that the last tenants had had a pump sunk for them, and resented the innovation, as though the well she was passing could feel the insult.  Over it grew two hawthorn trees; on the bent trunk of one of them she used to sit, long ago:  the charm of the position being enhanced by the possible danger of falling into the well and being drowned.  The rusty unused chain was wound round the windlass; the bucket was falling to pieces from dryness.  A lean cat came from some outhouse, and mewed pitifully with hunger; accompanying Sylvia to the garden, as if glad of some human companionship, yet refusing to allow itself to be touched.  Primroses grew in the sheltered places, just as they formerly did; and made the uncultivated ground seem less deserted than the garden, where the last year’s weeds were rotting away, and cumbering the ground.

Sylvia forced her way through the berry bushes to the herb-plot, and plucked the tender leaves she had come to seek; sighing a little all the time.  Then she retraced her steps; paused softly before the house-door, and entered the porch and kissed the senseless wood.

She tried to tempt the poor gaunt cat into her arms, meaning to carry it home and befriend it; but it was scared by her endeavour and ran back to its home in the outhouse, making a green path across the white dew of the meadow.  Then Sylvia began to hasten home, thinking, and remembering—­at the stile that led into the road she was brought short up.

Some one stood in the lane just on the other side of the gap; his back was to the morning sun; all she saw at first was the uniform of a naval officer, so well known in Monkshaven in those days.

Sylvia went hurrying past him, not looking again, although her clothes almost brushed his, as he stood there still.  She had not gone a yard—­no, not half a yard—­when her heart leaped up and fell again dead within her, as if she had been shot.

‘Sylvia!’ he said, in a voice tremulous with joy and passionate love.  ‘Sylvia!’

She looked round; he had turned a little, so that the light fell straight on his face.  It was bronzed, and the lines were strengthened; but it was the same face she had last seen in Haytersbank Gully three long years ago, and had never thought to see in life again.

He was close to her and held out his fond arms; she went fluttering towards their embrace, as if drawn by the old fascination; but when she felt them close round her, she started away, and cried out with a great pitiful shriek, and put her hands up to her forehead as if trying to clear away some bewildering mist.

Then she looked at him once more, a terrible story in her eyes, if he could but have read it.

Twice she opened her stiff lips to speak, and twice the words were overwhelmed by the surges of her misery, which bore them back into the depths of her heart.