slightest attempt at abridgment of the distance, he still rejoiced in
the sight of her and found the world good because of her presence in it.

He did not understand her feeling about him in the least. He did not
know that she had had to give up her room for him--that she detested the
mines and everything tainted by them, and himself as head and forefront
of the offence--that she regarded him as an outsider and a foreigner and
therefore quite out of place in Sark. He only knew that he saw very
little of her and would have liked to see a great deal more.

The very reserve of her treatment of himself--one might even say her
passive endurance of him--served but to stimulate within him the wish to
overcome it. The attraction of indifference is a distinct force in life.

There was something so trim and neat and altogether captivating to him
in the slim energetic figure, in its short blue skirts and print jacket,
as it whisked to and fro, inside and out, on its multifarious duties,
and still more in the sweet, serious face, glimmering coyly in the
shadow of the great sun-bonnet and always moulded to a fine, but, as it
seemed to him, a somewhat unnatural gravity in his company.

And yet he was quite sure she could be very much otherwise when she
would. For he had heard her singing over her work, and laughing merrily
with Bernel; and her face, sweet as it was in its repression, seemed to
him more fitted for smiles and laughter and joyousness.

He saw, of course, that brother Tom was a constant source of annoyance
to them all, but especially to her, and his blood boiled impotently on
her account.