perfection.

"We have all the day," he echoed. "How shall it be spent?"

Then she turned to him, all graciousness, her young face lifted to the
light. "Ah, you must decide! I do not wish even to think; the world is
so--how do you say--enchanted?"

He laughed in delight at her charming, pleading smile, her charming,
pleading hesitation; he caught her mood with swift intuition.

"That's it! The world is enchanted! Away behind us, is the Dreaming
Wood. What do you say? Shall we go and seek the Sleeping Beauty?"

She nodded silently. He was so perfectly the Blake of old--the Blake who
understood.

"Then the first thing is to find the magic coach! We must have nothing
so mundane as a carriage drawn by horses. A magic coach that travels by
itself!" He signalled to a passing automobile.

"Drive to the Pre Catelan--and drive slowly!" he directed; he handed her
to her seat with all the courtliness proper to the occasion, and they
were off, wheeling up the long incline toward the Arc de Triomphe.

They were silent while the chauffeur made a way through the many
vehicles, past the crowds of pedestrians that infest the entrance to the
Bois; but as the way grew clearer--as the spell of the trees, of the
green vistas and glimpsed water began to weave itself--Maxine turned and
laid her hand gently upon Blake's.

"_Mon cher_! How good you are!"

He started, thrilling at her touch.

"My dearest! Good?"

"In coming to me like this--"

He caught her hand quickly. "Don't!" he said. "Don't! It isn't right---
from you to me. You never doubted that I'd come? You knew I'd come?"

"Yes; I knew."

"Then that's all right!" He pressed her hand, he smiled, he reassured
her by all the subtle, intangible ways known to lovers, and it was borne
in upon her that he had altered, had grown mentally in his months of
exile--that he was steadier, more certain of life or of himself, than
when he had rushed tempestuously out of Max's studio. She pondered the
change, without attempting to analyze it; a deep sense of rest possessed
her, and she allowed her hand to lie passive in his until, all too soon,
their cab swept round to the left, sped past a bank of greenery and drew
up, with a creaking of brakes, before the restaurant of the Pre Catelan.

Everywhere was light, silence and, best boon of all, an unexpected
solitude--a solitude that invested the white building with a glamour of
unreality and converted the slight-stemmed, moss-grown trees