Lucy was one of the first down, and put her hand on the saddle, and looked carelessly round for somebody to put her up.  David stepped hastily forward, his heart beating, seized her foot, never waited for her to spring, but went to work at once, and with a powerful and sustained effort raised her slowly and carefully like a dead weight, and settled her in the saddle.  His gripe hurt her foot.  She bore it like a Spartan sooner than lose the amusement of his simplicity and enormous strength, so drolly and unnecessarily exerted.  It cost her a little struggle not to laugh right out, but she turned her head away from him a moment and was quit for a spasm.  Then she came round with a face all candor.

“Thank you, Mr. Dodd,” said she, demurely; and her eyes danced in her head.  Her foot felt encircled with an iron band, but she bore him not a grain of malice for that, and away she cantered, followed by his longing eyes.

David bore the separation well.  “To-morrow morning I shall have her all to myself,” said he.  He played with Kenealy and Reginald, and chatted with Bazalgette.  In the evening she was surrounded as usual, and he obtained only a small share of her attention.  But the thought of the morrow consoled him.  He alone knew that she walked before breakfast.

The next morning he rose early, and sauntered about till eight o’clock, and then he came on the lawn and waited for her.  She did not come.  He waited, and waited, and waited.  She never came.  His heart died within him.  “She avoids me,” said he; “it is not accident.  I have driven her out of her very garden; she always walked here before breakfast (she said so) till I came and spoiled her walk; Heaven forgive me.”

David could not flatter himself that this interruption of her acknowledged habit was accidental.  On the other hand, how kind and cheerful she had been with him on the same spot yesterday morning.  To judge by her manner, his company on her quarter-deck was not unwelcome to her yet she kept her room to-day, from the window of which she could probably see him walking to and fro, longing for her.  The bitter disappointment was bad enough, but here tormenting perplexity as to its cause was added, and between the two the pining heart was racked.

This is the cruelest separation; mere distance is the mildest.  Where land and sea alone lie between two loving hearts, they pine, but are at rest.  A piece of paper, and a few lines traced by the hand that reads like a face, and the two sad hearts exult and embrace one another afresh, in spite of a hemisphere of dirt and salt water, that parts bodies but not minds.  But to be close, yet kept aloof by red-hot iron and chilling ice, by rivals, by etiquette and cold indifference—­to be near, yet far—­this is to be apart—­this, this is separation.

A gush of rage and bitterness foreign to his natural temper came over Mr. Dodd.  “Since I can’t have the girl I love, I will have nobody but my own thoughts.  I cannot bear the others and their chat to-day.  I will go and think of her, since that is all she will let me do”; and directly after breakfast David walked out on the downs and made by instinct for the sea.  The wounded deer shunned the lively herd.