rned his face towards hers with a twinkling appeal.
They were close together, and the smiling interchange of glance seemed a
good and pleasant thing. Katrine was almost ashamed of the speed with
which the mental load slipped away, and disappeared; one glance into the
keen grey eyes, and it had vanished into space.

It was good to stand in the warm night, looking out at the glory of the
star-lit heavens, at the ripple of phosphorous on the water, but the
beauties of nature were but a secondary cause for the content which
enfolded her. The primary cause was the presence of the man by her
side, the big man with the grave face, and the clear, boylike eyes.
Katrine was not given to hasty friendships, but in this case there
seemed no preliminary stages to live through, for the moment of meeting
had acclaimed a mental understanding, which years of intimacy might have
failed to ensure. She forgot that she had been unhappy, and laughed a
soft, girlish little laugh, the tinkle of which struck strangely on her
own ears. Such a girlish laugh!

"Oh, yes! Let's! That will be nice... What shall we talk about?"

"Ourselves, of course," he said promptly; and at that they laughed
again. Katrine tilted her head, and met his eyes with a frank, gay
glance.

"Wasn't it Isabel Carnaby who said that there was really no other
subject to talk about but ourselves, just as there was really no other
dish than bacon for breakfast?"

"What about Lloyd George?"

They laughed gaily, laughed into each other's eyes with a sense of
intimacy which sent the spirits racing upwards with a mysterious
intoxication.

"Oh, well," Katrine allowed, "that's true! But Isabel lived before his
days. Did you ever play a game of making up Isabel Carnaby
conversations? It's rather fun."

"Not I... Couldn't to save my life... Far too difficult."

"Oh, it's easy enough, given the right people, and the right hour. It
would be no use starting it at the beginning of an evening when every
one is stiff and strained, but it goes splendidly after supper. Isabel
begins by giving a definition of some well-known term, and invites every
one else to follow suit. It is a favourite game of Grizel's, my
sister-in-law. We always make her Isabel for she is such a beguiling
little thing that she is not only witty herself, but spurs up every one
else to be witty too. One night we took `_Bores_' for a subject, and
she said: `A bore is a person who remembers all tha