hen are you coming back to
`Pastimes'?"

"It's uncertain. Not before Christmas. Is your mother quite well?"

"Quite, thanks. You know that I have made Miss Harding's acquaintance.
She is a charming old lady."

"I'm so glad you like her. I knew you had called. Nice little flat,
isn't it?"

He growled, his face eloquent with disapproval.

"If you call it `nice' to live burrowed underground! How sane people
can consent to live in town, herded together in a building more like a
prison than a home--"

"`The goodness and the grace' did not make us _all_ country squires!" I
said shortly, whereat he laughed--quite an easy, genial laugh, and
twinkled at me with his blue eyes. It was extraordinary how natural and
at his ease he appeared; so different from the stiff, silent man I had
known at Escott!

The journey takes exactly sixty minutes, and we talked the whole way.
For the first twenty minutes I was on my guard, nerving myself to say
"No" for the second time, with due firmness and finality. For the next
twenty I was friendly and natural. He was behaving so well that he
deserved encouragement. During the third twenty I said less, stared out
of the carriage window, and felt a disagreeable feeling of irritation
and depression. He went on talking about books and gardens and parish
difficulties, and I wasn't interested one bit. One may not wish a man
to propose to one for the second time; but, with the echo of vows of
undying devotion ringing in one's ears, it _is_ rather daunting to go
through an hour's _tete-a-tete_ without one personal remark! He had
said that I was thin. Perhaps he found me changed in other ways.
Perhaps on meeting me again he found he did not like me as much as he
had believed. Perhaps he was glad that I had said "No". We parted at
the Vicarage gate; he apparently quite comfortable and composed, I in
the lowest depths. What a change from last time!

The door opened, and before I had time to blink Delphine's arms were
round me, and a hot, wet cheek pressed against mine. She was sobbing in
a hard, breathless way which made my heart leap; but even on the way to
her sitting-room I gathered that my first fear was unfounded.

"Jacky was--the same! In bed. So tired--always so tired! Seems to
care for nothing. Hardly even"--the blue eyes opened in incredulous
misery--"for _me_!"

"When people are very weak, they can't care. It takes strength even to
love--at least, to realise that