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Catherine looked at him curiously the next morning. He looked wretched–haggard and hollow-eyed. She knew he had not come in till the summer dawn. But he had lost the rapt, uncanny look she hated; suddenly she no longer felt afraid of him. With this, she began to ask questions again.

“What kept ye out so late again last night, b’y?” she said reproachfully.

Roger looked at her in her morning ugliness. He had not really seen her for weeks. Now she smote on his tortured senses, so long drugged with beauty, like a physical blow. He suddenly burst into a laughter that frightened her.

“Preserve’s, b’y, have ye gone mad? Or,” she added, “have ye seen Isabel Temple’s ghost?”

“No,” said Roger loudly and explosively. “Don’t talk any more about that damned ghost. Nobody ever saw it. The whole story is balderdash.”

He got up and went violently out, leaving Catherine aghast. Was it possible Roger had sworn? What on earth had come over the b’y? But come what had or come what would, he no longer looked fey–there was that much to be thankful for. Even an occasional oath was better than that. Catherine went stiffly about her dish-washing, resolving to have ‘Liza Adams to supper some night.

For a week Roger lived in agony–an agony of shame and humiliation and self-contempt. Then, when the edge of his bitter disappointment wore away, he made another dreadful discovery. He still loved her and longed for her just as keenly as before. He wanted madly to see her–her flower-like face, her great, asking eyes, the sleek, braided flow of her hair. Ghost or woman–spirit or flesh–it mattered not. He could not live without her. At last his hunger for her drew him to the old grey house on the bay shore. He knew he was a fool–she would never look at him; he was only feeding the flame that must consume him. But go he must and did, seeking for his lost paradise.

He did not see her when he went in, but Mrs. Barr received him kindly and talked about her in a pleasant garrulous fashion which jarred on Roger, yet he listened greedily. Lilith, her aunt told him, had been made deaf by the accidental explosion of a gun when she was eight years old. She could not hear a sound but she could talk.

“A little, that is–not much, but enough to get along with. But she don’t like talking somehow–dunno why. She’s shy–and we think maybe she don’t like to talk much because she can’t hear her own voice. She don’t ever speak except just when she has to. But she’s been trained to lip-reading something wonderful–she can understand anything that’s said when she can see the person that’s talking. Still, it’s a terrible drawback for the poor child–she’s never had any real girl-life and she’s dreadful sensitive and retiring. We can’t get her to go out anywhere, only for lonely walks along shore by herself. We’re much obliged for what you did the other night. It ain’t safe for her to wander about alone as she does, but it ain’t often anybody from the harbour gets up this far. She was dreadful upset about it–hasn’t got over her scare yet.”

When Lilith came in, her ivory-white face went scarlet all over at the sight of Roger. She sat down in a shadowy corner. Mrs. Barr got up and went out. Roger was mute; he could find nothing to say. He could have talked glibly enough to Isabel Temple’s ghost in some unearthly tryst by her grave, but he could not find a word to say to this slip of flesh and blood. He felt very foolish and absurd, and very conscious of his twisted shoulder. What a fool he had been to come!

Then Lilith looked up at him–and smiled. A little shy, friendly smile. Roger suddenly saw her not as the tantalizing, unreal, mystic thing of the twilit grove, but as a little human creature, exquisitely pretty in her young-moon beauty, longing for companionship. He got up, forgetting his ugliness, and went across the room to her.