solace, failed to interest her. Love stories she would avoid for
weeks on end, as if they were the plague, suddenly to fall to and
devour them with avidity, when the inclination seized her.

It was not yet warm enough for her to sit in her nook; it was
doubtful if she would have done so if the weather had been
sufficiently propitious. The reason for her present indifference to
the spot, which she had always loved, was that it bordered the Avon,
and just now the river was swollen and turbulent with spring rains.
Her soul ached for companionship with something stable, soothing,
still. Perhaps this was why she preferred to walk by the canal that
touched Melkbridge in its quiet and lonely course. The canal had a
beauty of its own in Mavis' eyes: its red-brick, ivy-grown bridges,
its wooden drawbridges, deep locks, and deserted grass-grown tow-
paths were all eloquent of the waterways having arrived at a certain
philosophic repose, which was in striking contrast to the girl's
unquiet thoughts. Soon, as if in celebration of spring, both banks
were gay with borders of great yellow butter-cups. It seemed to
Mavis as if they decorated the tables of a feast to which she had
not been asked. The great awakening in the heart of life proceeded
exquisitely, inevitably. Mavis believed that, as the sun's rays had
no real meaning for her, it was only by some cruel mischance that
she was enabled to bear witness to their daily increasing warmth.
She would tell the troubles of her disturbed mind to Jill, who tried
to show her sympathy by licking her face. At night, she would often
waken out of a deep sleep with a start, when her eagerly
outstretched arms would grasp a vast emptiness. The sight of lovers
walking together would bring hot blood to her head; the proximity of
a young man would make her heart beat strangely.