look forward to and the wet windy weather which swept the contributed to her the by only event of the day seemed to be her father s departure in the morning immediately after breakfast he tied up his music in a brown paper parcel and put his into its case he spoke of missing his train and from the windows of the music room she saw him hastening down the road she had asked him if there were no he wished copied in the british museum absent he had answered no and on the glass with her fingers she wondered how the day pass there was nothing to do there was nothing even to think about she was tired of thinking that a pupil might come back � that a new pupil might at any moment knock at the door she was tired of wondering if her father s would ever pay � if the firm of music with whom he was now in treaty come to terms and enable him to give a concert in their hall or if they would break off as many had done before and more than of everything else she was tired of thinking if her father would ever have money to send her abroad or if she would remain in always one morning as she was returning from where she had gone to pay the weekly bills she discovered that she was no longer happy she stopped and with an empty heart saw the low lying fields with poultry pens and the horse by the broken hedge the old village was her prison and she longed as a bird she had her there she ought to love it but she didn t and looking on its too familiar aspect her aching heart asked if it would ever pass from her it seemed to her that she had not strength nor will to return home a little further on she met the he bowed and she wondered how he could have thought that she could care for him oh to live in that with him she pitied the young man who wore brown clothes and whose employment in a bank prevented him from going abroad for his health these people were well enough but they were not for her she seemed to see beyond london beyond the seas whither she not say and she could not the yearning which rose to her lips like a wave and over them formerly when there was choir practice at st joseph s she used to go there and meet her father but lately for by some reason which she could not explain to herself she had refrained the thought of this church had become distasteful to her and she returned home indifferent to everything to music and religion alike her eyes turned from the pile of volumes � part of s interminable works � and all the old furniture and she stood at the window and watched the rain dripping into the patch of black garden in front of the house surrounded by a low stone wall the opposite suggested a desolation which found a parallel in her heart the road and the pale brown sky frightened her so menacing seemed their monotony she knew all this it was all on her mind and all that ornamental park where she must go if it cleared a little for her afternoon walk she must tramp round that park once more she strove to keep out of her mind its walls its stone where the floated like white china ornaments almost as lifeless but worse even than these were the hours between six and eight for very often her father was detained and if he missed the half past six train he had to come by the half past seven and in those hours of waiting the dusk grew oppressive and fearful in the music room startled by a strange shadow she crouched in her and when the feeling of dread passed she was weak from want of food why did her father keep her waiting faint and weary of life she opened a volume of but there was no pleasure for her in the music and if she opened a volume of songs she had neither strength nor will to even through the first and rising from the instrument she walked across the room stretching her arms in a feverish despair she had not eaten for many hours and out of the of the stomach a rose into her eyes pressing her eyes with her hand she leaned against the door one evening she walked into the garden the silence and damp of the earth revived her and the sensation of the cold stone against which she was leaning was agreeable little stars a and misty sky and out of the mysterious spring twilight there came a strange and ultimate yearning a craving which nothing she had ever known could but those stars � could they tell her nothing one large almost as the moon itself by up in the sky and a voice within her whispered that that was her star that it held the secret of her destiny he gazed till her father called to her from the gate and all that evening she could think of nothing else the conviction flowed within her that the secret of her destiny was there and as she lay in bed the star seemed to take a visible shape a face rose out of the gulf beneath her she could not distinguish whether it was the face of a man or woman it was an idea rather than a face the ears were turned to her for her to take the the throat was deeply curved the lips were large and rose red the eyes were nearly closed and the hair was curled close over a straight low forehead the face rose up to hers she looked into the 