for him and have my arms about him. He will come." So she waited, as
some grey lake lies, full and smooth, awaiting the star below the
twilight. If she let her thoughts run on to the hour of their meeting,
she had to shut her eyes and press at her heart; but as yet she was not
out of tune for daily life, and she could imagine how that hour was to be
strewn with new songs and hushed surprises. And 'thus' he would look:
and 'thus.' "My hero!" breathed Emilia, shuddering a little. But now
she was perplexed. Now that he had come and gone, she began to hunger
bitterly for the sight of his face, and that which had hitherto nourished
her grew a sickly phantom of delight. She wondered how she had forced
herself to be patient, and what it was that she had found pleasure in.

None of the ladies were at home when Emilia returned. She went out to
the woods, and sat, shadowed by the long bent branch; watching
mechanically the slow rounding and yellowing of the beam of sunlight over
the thick floor of moss, up against the fir-stems. The chaffinch and the
linnet flitted off the grey orchard twigs, singing from new stations; and
the bee seemed to come questioning the silence of the woods and droning
disappointed away. The first excess of any sad feeling is half
voluntary. Emilia could not help smiling, when she lifted her head out
of a musing fit, to find that she had composed part of a minuet for the
languid dancing motes in the shaft of golden light at her feet. "Can I
remember it?" she thought, and forgot the incident with the effort.

Down at her right hand, bordering a water, stood a sallow, a dead tree,
channelled inside with the brown trail of a goat-moth. Looking in this
direction, she saw Cornelia advancing to the tree. When the lady had
reached it, she drew a little book from her bosom, kissed it, and dropped
it in the hollow. This done, she passed among the firs. Emilia had
perceived that she was agitated: and with that strange instinct of hearts