for a moment with a feeling that she ought not to say what she greatly
desired to say; that speech would be disloyal. But the need to speak was
too strong within her, her heart too heavily charged with fear.

"I will tell you," she said, and, with a glance towards the open windows
of the house, she led Colonel Dewes to a corner of the garden where, upon
a grass mound, there was a garden seat. From this seat one overlooked the
garden hedge. To the left, the little village of Poynings with its grey
church and tall tapering spire, lay at the foot of the gap in the Downs
where runs the Brighton road. Behind them the Downs ran like a rampart to
right and left, their steep green sides scarred here and there by
landslips and showing the white chalk. Far away the high trees of
Chanctonbury Ring stood out against the sky.

"Dick has secrets," Sybil said, "secrets from me. It used not to be so. I
have always known how a want of sympathy makes a child hide what he feels
and thinks, and drives him in upon himself, to feed his thoughts with
imaginings and dreams. I have seen it. I don't believe that anything but
harm ever comes of it. It builds up a barrier which will last for life. I
did not want that barrier to rise between Dick and me--I--" and her voice
shook a little--"I should be very unhappy if it were to rise. So I have
always tried to be his friend and comrade, rather than his mother."

"Yes," said Colonel Dewes, wisely nodding his head. "I have seen you
playing cricket with him."

Colonel Dewes had frequently been puzzled by a peculiar change of manner
in his friends. When he made a remark which showed how clearly he
understood their point of view and how closely he was in agreement with
it, they had a way of becoming reticent in the very moment of expansion.