March had come in like a lion. Even in the village of Dinas, sheltered as it was, the east wind swept down the funnel of the valley and through the very houses, as only an east wind in Wales can sweep, bitter, absolutely unsparing of man or beast.

Alicia Edwards gathered her cross-over shawl closer to her as she stood in her father's shop and listened for the click of the telegraph instrument. It was almost the only amusement she had now, and any moment might bring the wire for which Adam Bate and the housekeeper at Cwmfaernog had been calling in vain these two days past.

It was becoming serious. They would have to bury the poor, dead gentleman after all, if some one did not come to help them to arrange--the other thing. For in this far away Welsh village, where every boy and girl had been educated up to the standard set by the most advanced progressivists of the day, the very idea of cremation was absolute damnation. It could be nothing else, since how could the Creator resurrect a body that did not exist? So half the village thought it only right that such an atheist as Mr. Sylvanus Smith had been in life should meet the fire without delay, and the other half, more mercifully inclined, explained the difficulty in getting hold of Mr. Cruttenden, the dead man's executor, as symptomatic of pity on the part of Providence.

Alicia Edwards, thinking over this, sighed. It was only one more case in which the teaching of school ran counter to the knowledge that was necessary in daily life. For what would her father, the elder, what would she herself say, if she was to allow even elementary science to interfere with her belief? The world was a very confusing place. There was but one certain thing in it for a woman, and that was love; but every one could not get love. She thought of her own struggle for it and her failure. Myfanwy had beaten her. She had reft Mervyn away even from his great vocation, and rumour had it that, after a little longer service in Williams and Edwards's shop, those two would be married and set up in a small business of their own. In face of this, what did all the rest matter? Despite all the talk in the village concerning Mervyn's sudden departure and Morris Pugh's equally sudden resignation of the pastorship of Dinas, she had held her tongue with fair discretion, only allowing a few mysterious surmises to leak out. To begin with, Myfanwy's last words had alarmed her, and then the offenders had passed altogether from her control. What would it matter to Mervyn, now employee in Williams and Edwards, if it was found out that he had ruined half the girls in Dinas?

Besides, something new and stern in her father's attitude towards her in regard to the revival made her suspect that he was not without his suspicions. The less said about morals the better, especially since the effect of those midnight meetings was already making itself felt in the immediate neighbourhood. For Isaac Edwards was relentless on this point. He had downright refused to let her go on with her sweet singing now that all her companions had died or disappeared; so having, of course, lost her post as pupil teacher, there was nothing for it but to stop at home and prepare, so her father said, for a normal college. The girl herself stiffened a sullen lip and looked down the lane which led to the minister's house now occupied by the Reverend Hwfa Williams; for he admired her. Of that there could be no question. The possibility of marrying him, indeed, had become quite a factor in her life, and she decided most points with a view to this possibility. Small wonder then if Alicia Edwards's amicability and her general desirability as a minister's wife had begun to strike Hwfa Williams himself, while even Isaac Edwards was beginning to waver in his insistance on Logarithms and the Science of Tuition.

"Put on your hat, Alicia," he said from his ledger, "and run down the road. It will warm you up before you have to go to the Bible class."

And Alicia went, nothing loth. It was better battling with the wind than watching for telegrams which never came, especially when there was the chance of coming back with the wind and with a man whose pale, heavy, dark-browed face was beginning to become to you, by diligent care and concentration, the handsomest in the world.

So she fought her ground steadily against the swirling clouds of dust.

Had she only gone up the hill over the short, springy grass and the broken brown bracken she would have enjoyed the wind, as Ned Blackborough was enjoying it on his way to Cwmfaernog. For it was the 1st of March, the day on which he had promised Aura he would return and ask her once more to marry him. He had come back from the East but the day before, and being, so to speak, made up of impulses, moods, fancies, in the indulgence of which he had of late sought his chief pleasures, he had determined to find his way to her, as he had found it that very first night, over the summit of Llwydd y Bryn, the "Eye of the World."

Such fancies hurt no one, but he was beginning to realise that in them lay all the salt of life. What was it to the world, absorbed conventionally in the sordid sleep which follows perforce on sordid money grubbing, if he found the highest rhythm of life in the quiver of the moonlit woods? Nothing. Let those see who had the eyes to see.

So when, a bit wearied with his climb, he sat down where he had carelessly put out his hand to catch the flying footsteps of day, it struck him now, thoughtfully, that, in truth, it was all a man's life, all he could do towards gaining happiness. He must just catch at the flying footsteps of something unseen. Ever since the day when death had so nearly overtaken him while he was studying life in a black drop of water, he had been haunted at times by that feeling of sightlessness, touchlessness, soundlessness which had come to him then.

It came to him now on the top of Llwydd y Bryn, though before his bodily eyes lay half the principality of Wales, spread out as if it were a map. Surpassingly beautiful too. In its way as beautiful as that island in the Ægean, now waiting ready for its mistress, for he was quite prepared to follow Aura into the wilderness if needs be. He had thought much concerning her and concerning himself during the last six weeks, and he had begun to recognise that in some ways she was right in shrinking from what she called love, as a desecration of herself and of him. The feeling, however, was due to the absolutely unnatural association in marriage of the MIND with the body. An association which was simply an attempt to find a mental fig-leaf for what either required none, or was beyond decent cover. One thing, however, seemed to him certain. Aura must both love him and also desire to marry him. Yes, she loved him, or thought she did, which to her was the same thing.

He sprang to his feet, that thought being enough to start him on any path, and, ere leaving the summit, cast one look round it, remembering gladly that it might be the last time he should see it.

All was as his recollection held it. Just a brown, peaty, stone-strewn rise, and beyond, on all sides, an immensity of sea and sky and land. Only the placard on the shieling had been damaged by the winter storms. The ultimate 6d. was gone and "ginger beer" stood alone, vaunting itself free like the nectar of the gods.

Ginger beer! That was about what it came to for the million.

With an amused shrug of the shoulders he began the descent, every step of which was beautiful, every sight in which brought to him the feeling as if he trod on air, as if nothing in heaven or earth could trammel him again.

As he crossed the stream above the farm buildings, where on that night nine months ago they had stood and shouted, the whole steading struck him as looking forlorn and deserted, but, being sure of finding Martha in the kitchen, he went boldly through the cottage and passed through the door that was like a coal cellar's to the garden room. But this time there was no flash of blinding sunlight to dazzle him. It was almost dark, for the green sun-blinds on either side were drawn down; that, however, was surely a figure by the window.

"At last!" came Aura's voice, full of infinite relief. "I am so glad."

Swept away by the whole-heartedness of his welcome he went forward swiftly and had her in his arms, but his first touch was enough; she shrank back with a half-articulate cry of surprise and thrust him from her by force.

"Aura!" he said almost incredulously, "and you sounded--so--so glad."

"I thought--I thought you were Ted," she explained with a little sob. "I've been expecting him so long, you see."

"Ted!" he echoed, "you have been expecting him? I don't understand."

"No," she replied hurriedly in a low voice. "Of course, I forgot you couldn't." There was a faint pause, then she collected herself. "We--we were married----" This time the pause remained unbroken until coolly, almost sarcastically, the question came.

"You were married! May I ask--when?"

The darkness of those drawn down blinds was in a way a godsend to them both. It hid all expression, and it seemed to Ned Blackborough in his incredulous dismay as if he were speaking to a disembodied spirit; was he also, by some chance, a disembodied spirit?

"I--I don't remember," came her voice, all strained and curiously weary. "Oh, yes; of course I do. It was on the 14th of February." She was just beginning to remember dates, and to recollect that this must be the 1st of March. Everything seemed to have been blotted out by her grandfather's sudden death two days before, and the impossibility of getting any answer to her telegram from Ted, Ted on whom she had learnt to rely.

Ned laughed suddenly. "St. Valentine's Day," he echoed. "So I sent you my valentine as a wedding present. If I had only known, I mightn't have taken so much--trouble--to send it off. I expect I was pretty near death when you were getting married, young lady, and I compliment you on the quickness----"

"But we were engaged, quite a long time before," she said in idle protest, for something in her seemed hammering at her head, beating into it the knowledge that she had been mean.

Once more he laughed. "May I ask how long?"

"On--on New Year's Day." He could scarcely hear what she said.

"On New Year's Day," he echoed incredulously, "impossible!" Then the conviction that, if this were so, Ted Cruttenden had--well! almost lied to him came to rouse his anger to the uttermost, and he strode towards her shadow. "But this is foolishness," he exclaimed, "You know you love me--you know you do----"

"Hush!" she cried, interrupting his swift rise in tone, "Remember, please, that my grandfather lies dead upstairs."

"Dead!" he said stupidly after a pause, "Dead! I--I didn't know. I--I am very sorry." The conventional words of sympathy came slowly as he stood, feeling baulked indescribably, done out, as it were, of his just claim to anger.

"Are there any more terrors to tell?" he asked at last recklessly. "Do you happen to be dead yourself, or has the 'coo' been killed? I beg your pardon--you won't understand the allusion----" he added hastily, "but I must be excused; there are limits! So, I see; you took me for Ted--for your husband, save the mark! Why isn't he here?--where he ought to be?"

The sudden blame, following her own thought so closely, took Aura all unprepared. The dull grievance which had been hers all those long hours of vain waiting became suddenly acute. She dissolved into young self-pitying tears.

"I don't know," she murmured, strangling her sobs, "and I don't in the least know what to do."

For an instant Ned Blackborough felt inclined to arraign high heaven for thus robbing him of righteous wrath.

But he was a gentleman, his heart was soft, so there was nothing for it save to accept the situation with the best grace he could. And the grace came, to his surprise, with such exceeding ease, despite his ill-usage, that he had to drive himself not towards patience, but to impatience, as he listened to Aura's tale of ignorance and loneliness.

A man with money behind him, or rather money with a man behind it, can do all things save avoid vulgarity, ensure happiness, or escape death.

By the evening, therefore, Ned Blackborough was able to give Aura a most sympathetic and affectionate telegram from her husband.

"We ran him to earth in Vienna, where he had gone on business," said Ned, refraining, why he scarcely knew, from saying also that Ted had been found in a Biergarten, and that he had left strict orders that telegrams were not to be forwarded. "I got him through Hirsch, but he again was unfortunately in Paris; they have some big scoop on hand. But it is all right now, and he should be home to-morrow. As for the rest, you need not bother. It is all settled, and I will tell Martha what to expect. So I will say good-bye."

She could not stifle down the quick appeal, "Must you go?"

"Of course, I must go," he replied roughly, "I ought never to have come, and I am sorry I did, even though I have helped you. Good-bye."

She watched him put on his greatcoat without another word, almost angry with herself for feeling so inexpressibly mean. She would have liked to tell him that she had been unable to wait, that even if she had waited her answer would have been the same; but she felt that all this must come afterwards when he had had time.

And then suddenly he turned to her again.

"I'll leave this here, I think," he said, putting a flat parcel he had taken out from his pocket on the piano, "you might while an hour or so by looking at them. It--it isn't all cussedness, Mrs. Cruttenden; I should like you to see them. I should like you to know something of it, once! Good-bye; throw them into the fire when you have done with them. I shall not want them again."

When he had gone she went over to the piano, and taking the packet crouched down with it beside the fading fire-light, which she stirred into a blaze. To other eyes the room might have looked inexpressibly dreary, large, bare, empty, even the very sofa, imported into it for the old man's invalid use, taken away for him when the stairs became too much for his strength. But Aura was accustomed to the bareness; it had been part of her life always.

They were sketches evidently, and on the fold of white paper, which was their last covering, Ned had written one word.

"Avilion."

She sat looking at them all, these plans and sketches of the island in the southern sea, that was to have been that Island of the Blessed, of which a glimpse only can be seen by mortals, when at sunset time the golden sea fades into the golden sky, and far away--is it land or is it cloud?--a purple shadow, tipped with rosy light into distant peaks, fades with the sky into the grey of night.

How beautiful they were! And in every one of them, in front, even of the foreground, looking out, as the painter himself must have looked out, over the blue ripples, down into the pellucid cave depths where strange fish showed in flashes of colour, towards the leafy contours of the ilex woods, along the flower-decked lawns, or through the fluted columns of marble pavilions, stood the filmy diaphanous figure of a woman, white, immobile, mist-like with averted face.

But she knew who it was, and a lump rose in her throat as she recognised it as his dream of her.

She was not worth it! No! Behind his dream of her stood a reality that had nothing to do with her. He was seeking, and she was seeking something that had nothing to do with manhood or womanhood.

The fire blazed up fiercely, fitfully, as one by one in obedience to his request, those dreamful figures caught, flared up for a space, and then died down into little trembling sparks.

Behind them all lay Darkness and Peace. So to her as she sat holding the Dream of a Man's Love in her hands, came for the first time a glimpse of the sightlessness and soundlessness, and touchlessness, which lie beyond all earthly things.

Ned meanwhile was giving his orders to Martha in the kitchen. She was taking them, as usual, with many subservient bobs, but with a certain waveringness of voice, and an unsteadiness of eye which augured ill for her calm of mind.

"I'll do my best, your lordship," she said finally with an odd little sniff, half tears, half anger. "But what with folks going away as shud 'ave stayed, an' them as might a-gone away an' welcome stoppin' on, an' both together comin' back an' staying away, I'm like a o-ven with the door bein' open constant--not fit to bake a penny-piece."

Ned looked at her, for a wonder, distastefully.

"Do you mean," he said, "that you didn't expect to see me again?"

Martha grew red, then white. "So sure as my name's Martha Higgins," she began tearfully, "If I'd expected your lordship wasn't playin' the back-step----"

He interrupted her calmly. "I'm sorry to say it, Martha, but I think you are a fool," he said calmly, and left her collapsed in a chair crying silently, not so much for herself as for him; since she had seen the tragedy of his face.

Adam Bate, coming in ten minutes later, found her so, and being diffident of his power to console, crept away again to administer comfort to a newly calved cow who was lowing for her young one.

"Coo-up, Coo-ep, m'dear," he said, wisping its back with a handful of straw, "th' shallt 'ave it for sure when th' bags full, so set th' mind to the makin' o' milk. See! there's a bit o' mangle fur 'ee, but mind 'ee 'to whom much is given of them shall much be requir-ed,' as passon says. So--'pail-full, cauf-full.' Think o' that an' dinnot squander God's strength on booin'."

He felt inclined to read some such moral lesson to Martha when he returned to find her in no better case, the fire dwindling and no sign of tea; but, as has been said, he felt diffident. So he contented himself with laying the tea, poking up the fire and putting on the kettle, accompanying these unwonted actions with the hissing noise which grooms use, apparently as an encouragement to their own ardour. Perhaps this aided him to courage; perhaps the presence of death in the house taking him back to fundamentals roused in him a revolt of vitality, a desire to secure safety in equilibrium; anyhow, after a time, he sat himself down in a kitchen chair, and scrooped it by excruciating half-inches towards Martha's, until they almost touched.

"Martha, woman!" he said tentatively, "If this sort o' thing's goin' on--If you 'urns goin' to be taken, this no supper, no tea way, as you 'urn bin doin' o' late--why there ain't nothin' for it but ter marry me, as doan't forgit them things."

Martha shook her head forlornly. "It--it'll have to come to that in the end, I sippose," she sobbed.

You might have knocked Adam down with a feather. After all these fourteen years to be even so grudgingly accepted as this, made him feel that the round world was no longer sure. He sat with his mouth wide open, wondering what topic of conversation would in the future take the place of unending proposal and refusal. Then the sense that he must leave such dark things to Providence, and do his duty in the present by himself, and Martha made him ask tremulously--

"Will you name the yappy day, my darlin'? Will you, my darlin', name the yappy day?"

Martha wiped her eyes and became more composed. "Some time afore we dies, I suppose," she said with a disconsolate whimper, "I can't promise more'n that, Adam Bate--an' don't ee see the kettle bilin'."