but her intelligence was really of a high order and browsed eagerly upon his. The only other she was seeing at this time was Dr. Peter Kennedy, a man of very different calibre. Peter Kennedy, country born and bred, of a coarsening profession and provincial experience.
Margaret was not made to live alone, for all her talk of resources, her piano and her books, her writing materials. The house, Carbies, was soon obnoxious to her. She had taken it for three months against the advice of her people, who feared solitude for her. She could not give in so soon, tell them they were right. But it was and remains ugly, ill-furnished, with its rough garden. She had some sort of heart attack the Monday after Gabriel Stanton's first visit, and it was then Dr. Kennedy told her about her house, wondered at her having taken it.
After he told her that it had been a nursing-home she began to dislike the place actively, said the rooms were haunted with the groans of people who had been operated upon, that she smelt ether and disinfectants. She did not tell Gabriel Stanton these things. To Gabriel, Carbies was enchanted ground, he came here as to a shrine, worshipping. He used to talk to her of the golden bloom of the gorse, and the purple of the distant sea, of the way the sun shone on his coming. When with him she made no mention of distaste. For five successive weeks that
