If she could only have lived it all over again, knowing the true from the false. False no, that was not the right word. . . . "Do you know, Rachel, I think every one is capable of two kinds of love," Jenny went on again; "a lower love and a higher. The lower suffices while people are credulous and ignorant. One is content simply to have one's vanity satisfied. . If the feeling grows, it is like ivy growing on a stone wall; there is hardly soil enough for it to take root in; it must throw out suckers in a hundred directions before it can flourish. . . . It is different after. One wants a deeper kind of sympathy, a stronger and readier helpfulness, a more understanding companionship. . I am ashamed of the past!"

"Then try to forget it, Jenny," Rachel said. She had been listening in no inert

way; but words had thrust themselves in between Jenny's words,-voices beseeching a little, complaining a little; refusing to be silenced altogether. 'Forget the past, dear. You will know the future when it comes. You will not put the higher love away from you now."

A brief silence followed. Of what was Jenny thinking? Rachel wondered. The expression of her face had changed a little. It was not so calm. Yet she spoke very quietly, without embarrassment :

"Have you seen Fred Stanier, lately?" she asked.

Rachel's heart gave a leap. "No, not quite lately,” she said, "not since they came back." "They-who? Has he beenaway?"

Yes, he and Mrs. Stanier," Rachel said, looking resolutely down the moor. "They

VOL. II.

9

went away on the day of the wedding, and came back to Stonebrig Heights on Monday. They are to live at the Heights, I understand."

This then was the end of it all. Jenny did not blame him even in thought. It only seemed as if an idea that had been haunting her all along had been put into words, the idea that she had been mistaken from the beginning in this man, who had but acted according to the fitful wavering light that was in him.

Not one cry arose in her heart, not even a cry of indignation. She could look back over the time of dark intense agony that she had lived through with full comprehension. She could realize still the passionate, fevered, half-unreal love,-a love that she told herself could not under any circum

stances have become a thing of enduring value. And more than all, she could put the two together, the love and the pain, and see in them one teacher teaching the same great lesson.

Yet she could not help wondering a little at her own quietness, at the strange feeling that was almost indifference. Was it real? She pictured Fred Stanier happy, devoted to his wife, and there was no pain in dwelling on the picture. If there was anything it was relief, a sense of satisfaction in the completed separation.

He could never again come between her and the light. There had been wrong and sorrow and forgiveness: now there remained only forgetfulness. . . . Rachel looking up at the little face was fully satisfied.

"I had no idea Netherton was such a pleasant place," Rachel was saying a few days later. She was standing in the porch at Esk Cottage, The white lilacs were out, the bees were humming to the hyacinths, the Gloire de Dijon was opening to the sun.

"Yes it's pleasant enough," Anthony replied. He was putting the geraniums into the borders. Perhaps he was too much absorbed to enter into conversation just then. Rachel would wait.

But Anthony had not calculated upon this. "I should say it's a healthy place too," he resumed presently, without pausing in his work. "I think you are looking better for your visit, Rachel."

"Yes it has done me good. .

And I

think it would be good for you too, if you

were to go over for a day or two."