Tongues of Conscience

to him and that seemed to emphasise his fine self-possession—"pathetic, and suggestive of calamity." "I have noticed that, indeed," Uniacke answered, "and never, I think, more than to-night." Hamilton looked across at him in the firelight. "Where did you see it fall?" he asked. "I was by the wall of the churchyard." "It was you, then, whom I saw from the window. It seemed to be a mourner looking at the graves." "I was looking at them. But nobody I care for deeply is buried there. The night, however, in such an island as this, makes every grave seem like the grave of a person one has known. It is the sea, I daresay." "So close on every hand. Why, this house of yours might be a ship afloat a hundred miles from land, judging by the sounds of the waves." He sighed heavily. "I hope the air will do you good," Uniacke remarked, with a sudden relapse into conversational lameness. "Thank you. But sea air is no novelty to me. Half of my life, at least, has been spent in it. I have devoted all the best of my life, my powers, my very soul to the service of the sea. And now, when I am growing old, I sometimes think that I shall hate it before I go." "Hate it!" "Yes." "Well—but it has brought you fame." "H'm. And wealth and a thousand acquaintances. Yes, that's quite true. Sometimes, nevertheless, we learn in the end to hate those who have brought us most. Perhaps, because they have educated us in the understanding of disappointment. You love the sea?" "Yes." "You wouldn't be here otherwise." "I did not come here exactly because of that," Uniacke said slowly. "No," said the painter. "Rather to forget something." "I doubt if this is a place which could teach one to forget. I find it quite otherwise." The two men looked at each other, the elderly painter on his height of fame, the young clergyman in his depth of obscurity, and each felt that there was a likeness between them. "I came here to forget a woman," Uniacke said at last, moved by a strange impulse to speak out. "Yes, I see. It is the old idea of sorrowful men, a hermitage. I have often wondered in London, in Rome, in Athens, whether a hermitage is of any avail. Men went out into…