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the continual gusts on every hand blew the mist from before her eyes, drew it aside like a curtain . . . Her eyes sparkled; and, when the winter had done blowing and raining, when suddenly, without any transition, a breath of spring—the limpid blue of the sky, the tender green of the stirring earth—floated over and through the Woods, it was as though she yearned for movement. She managed, every afternoon that Addie was free, to take him away from Van der Welcke and to lure him out for a long walk, out of the town, over the dunes, ever so far. Addie, with his eyes bright with laughing surprise, thought it very jolly of her and would go with her, though he was no walker and preferred bicycling, athirst for speed. But, in his young, gallant boy's soul, he laughed softly, thought Mamma charming: grown years younger, grown into a young woman, suddenly, in her short skirt, her little cloth cape, with the sailor-hat on her curly hair and the colour in her cheeks, slim-waisted, quick-footed, her voice clear, her laugh sometimes ringing out suddenly. He thought of Papa and that she was now becoming as young as he; and Addie felt himself old beside her. He saw nothing of what was happening in his mother, even as nobody saw it, for she kept it to herself, was no different to the others, spoke no differently to the others, perhaps only just with a brighter laugh. What she read, what she learnt, what she felt, what she thought: all this was not per-