he stars,
before they decided to go back and live upon the parlor table under the
brand-new looking-glass. For the stars are disconcertingly unconcerned
when you have climbed to them, and so altogether unimpressed by your
achievement that it is the nature of all china people to slink home
again, precisely as your Rachel did--and as Mrs. Charteris will assure
you."

"I?" said Anne. "Now, honestly, Rudolph, I was thinking you ought not to
let him sit upon the grass, because he really has a cold. And if I were
you, I would give him a good dose of castor-oil to-night. Some people
give it in lemon-juice, I know, but I found with my boy that peppermint
is rather less disagreeable. And you could easily send somebody over to
the store at the station----"

Anne broke off short. "Was I being inadequate again? I am sorry, but
with children you never know what a cold may lead to, and I really do
not believe it good for him to sit in this damp grass."

"Sonnikins," said Rudolph Musgrave, "you had better climb up into my
lap, before you and I are Podsnapped from the universe by the only
embodiment of common-sense just now within our reach."

He patted the boy's head and latterly resumed: "I am afraid of you,
Anne. Whenever I am imagining vain things or stitching romantic
possibilities, like embroideries, about the fabric of my past, I always
find the real you in my path, as undeniable as a gas-bill. I don't
believe you ever dare to think, because there is no telling what it
might lead to. You are simply unassailably armored by the courage of
other people's convictions."

Her candid eyes met his over the boy's bright head. "And what in the
world are you talking about?"

"I am lamenting. I am rending the air and beating my breast on account
of your obstinate preference for being always in the right. I do wish
you would endeavor to impersonate a human being a trifle more
convincingly----"

But the great gong, booming out for luncheon, interrupted him at this
point, and Colonel Musgrave was never permitted to finish his complaint
against Anne's unimaginativeness.

IV

On that same Sunday morning, while Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave
contended with little Roger's boredom on the lawn before Matocton,
Patricia and Charteris met by accident on the seventh terrace of the
gardens. Patricia had mentioned casually at the breakfast-table that she
intended to spend the forenoon on this terrace unsabbatically making
notes