.

.

Oh, what has become of our happiness! What has become of it!" And she turned, full length in the swing, and hid her face in the silken pillows.
For a long while she lay there, the western sun turning her crown of hair to fire above the white nape of her slender neck; and he saw her hands clasping, unclasping, or crushing the tiny handkerchief deep into one palm.
There was a chair near; he drew it toward her, and sat down, steadying the swing with one hand on the chain.
"Dearest," he said under his breath, "I am very selfish to have done this; but I--I thought--perhaps--you might have cared enough to--to venture--" "I do care; you are very cruel to me." The voice was childishly broken and muffled.

He looked down at her, slowly realising that it was a child he still was dealing with--a child with a child's innocence, repelled by the graver phase of love, unresponsive to the deeper emotions, bewildered by the glimpse of the mature role his attitude had compelled her to accept.

That she already had reached that mile-stone and, for a moment, had turned involuntarily to look back and find her childhood already behind her, frightened her.
Thinking, perhaps, of his own years, and of what lay behind him, he sighed and looked out over the waste of moorland where the Atlantic was battering the sands of Surf Point.