The Real Charlotte. 273 



back upon both sunlight and mountain and beginning to 

 walk back to where Bobby and Dottie were searching for 

 jelly-fish among the sea-weed cast up by the storm, " the 

 day's done for now, it's as good for me to go up to the four 

 o'clock service as be streeling about in the cold here." 



Almost at the same moment the chimes from the church 

 on the hill behind the town struck out upon the wind with 

 beautiful severity, and obeying them listlessly, she left the 

 children and turned up the steep suburban road that was 

 her shortest way to Christ Church. 



It was a long and stiffish pull ; the wind blew her hair 

 about till it looked like a mist of golden threads, the colour 

 glowed dazzlingly in her cheeks, and the few men whom she 

 passed bestowed upon her a stare of whose purport she was 

 well aware. This was a class of compliment which she 

 neither resented nor was surprised at, and it is quite possible 

 that some months before she might have allowed her sense 

 of it to be expressed in her face. But she felt now as if the 

 approval of the man in the street was not worth what it used 

 to be. It was, of course, agreeable in its way, but on this 

 Christmas afternoon, with all its inevitable reminders of the 

 past and the future, it brought with it the thought of how 

 soon her face had been forgotten by the men who ha(;^ 

 praised it most. 



The gas was lighted in the church, and the service was 

 just beginning as she passed the decorated font and went 

 uncertainly up a side-aisle till she was beckoned into a pew 

 by a benevolent old lady. She knelt down in a corner, be- 

 side a pillar that was wreathed with a thick serpent of ever- 

 greens, and the old lady looked up from her admission oi 

 sin to wonder that such a pretty girl was allowed to walk 

 through the streets by herself. The heat of the church had 

 brought out the aromatic smell of all the green things, the 

 yellow gas flared from its glittering standards, and the 

 glimmering colours of the east window were dying into 

 darkness with the dying daylight. When she stood up for 

 the psalms she looked round the church to see if there were 

 anyone there whom she knew ; there were several familiar 

 faces, but no one with whom she had ever exchanged a word, 

 and turning round again she devoted herself to the hopeless 

 task of finding out the special psalms that the choir were 



s 



