aware of it she wanted to escape from the sleepy old scene, and had begun
to be consumed with longing for the great world outside. On summer
evenings she would go up Peel Hill and lie on the heather, where she had
first seen John Storm, and watch the ships weighing anchor in the bay
beyond the old dead castle walls, and wish she were going out with
them--out to the sea and the great cities north and south. But existence
closed in ever-narrowing circles round her, and she could see no way out.
Two years passed, and at eighteen she was fretting that half her life had
wasted away. She watched the sun until it sank into the sea, and then she
turned back to Glenfaba and the darkened region of the sky.

It was all the fault of their poverty, and their poverty was the fault of
the Church. She began to hate the Church; It had made her an orphan; and
when she thought of religion as a profession it seemed a selfish thing
anyway. If a man was really bent on so lofty an aim (as her own father
had been) he could not think of himself; he had to give up life and love
and the world, and then these always took advantage of him. But people
had to live in the world for all that, and what was the good of burying
yourself before you were dead?

Somehow her undefined wishes took shape in visions of John Storm, and one
day she heard he was home again. She went out on the hill that evening
and, being seen only by the gulls, she laughed and cried and ran. It was
just like poetry, for there he was himself lying on the edge of the cliff
near the very spot where she had been used to lie. On seeing him she went
more slowly, and began to poke about in the heather as if she had seen
nothing. He came up to her with both hands outstretched, and then
suddenly she remembered that she was wearing her old jersey, and she
flushed up to the eyes and nearly choked with shame. She got better
by-and-bye and talked away like a mill-wheel, and then fearing he might