The hours of the Hatchard Memorial librarian were from three to five;
and Charity Royall's sense of duty usually kept her at her desk until
nearly half-past four.

But she had never perceived that any practical advantage thereby
accrued either to North Dormer or to herself; and she had no scruple
in decreeing, when it suited her, that the library should close an hour
earlier. A few minutes after Mr. Harney's departure she formed this
decision, put away her lace, fastened the shutters, and turned the key
in the door of the temple of knowledge.

The street upon which she emerged was still empty: and after glancing up
and down it she began to walk toward her house. But instead of entering
she passed on, turned into a field-path and mounted to a pasture on the
hillside. She let down the bars of the gate, followed a trail along the
crumbling wall of the pasture, and walked on till she reached a knoll
where a clump of larches shook out their fresh tassels to the wind.
There she lay down on the slope, tossed off her hat and hid her face in
the grass.

She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to
all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in
her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under
her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the
fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the
creak of the larches as they swayed to it.

She often climbed up the hill and lay there alone for the mere pleasure
of feeling the wind and of rubbing her cheeks in the grass. Generally
at such times she did not think of anything, but lay immersed in an