rich in happiness.

But the secret hiding-place--their very own hiding-place, the
opening among the pines that overhung the jumble of rocks and the
sea--she could not bring herself to visit. And then, on the
afternoon of the third day when she was driving alone toward the
lighthouse, her pony, of his own accord, from force of habit,
turned smartly into the wood road. And again from force of habit,
before he reached the spot that overlooked the sea, he came to a
full stop. There was no need to make him fast. For hours,
stretching over many summer days, he had stood under those same
branches patiently waiting.

On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as
one enters the aisle of some dim cathedral, Helen advanced into
the sacred circle. And then she stood quite still. What she had
expected to find there she could not have told, but it was gone.
The place was unknown to her. She saw an opening among gloomy
pines, empty, silent, unreal. No haunted house, no barren moor,
no neglected graveyard ever spoke more poignantly, more
mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no sign of
his or of her former presence. Across the open space something
had passed its hand, and it had changed. What had been a
trysting-place, a bower, a nest, had become a tomb. A tomb, she
felt, for something that once had been brave, fine, and
beautiful, but which now was dead. She had but one desire, to
escape from the place, to put it away from her forever, to
remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had
remembered it, and as now she must always remember It. She turned
softly on tiptoe as one who has intruded on a shrine.