cannot bear to see him so thin and colourless."

Cameron now entertained a lively suspicion how matters stood, and knew
that Stephanie also suspected; but he only said, carelessly: "It's
probably dissipation. You know what a terrible pace he's been going from
the cradle onward."

She smiled quietly. "Yes, I know, Sandy. And I know, too, that you are
the only man who has been able to keep up that devilish pace with him."

"I've led a horrible life," muttered Cameron darkly.

Stephanie laughed; he gave her his hand as she stood balanced on the big
log; she laid her fingers in his confidently, looked into his honest
face, still laughing, then sprang lightly to the ground.

"What a really good man you are!" she said tormentingly.

"Oh, heaven! If you call me that I'm really done for!"

"Done for?" she exclaimed in surprise. "How?"

"Done for as far as you are concerned."

"I? Why how, and with what am I concerned, Sandy? I don't understand
you."

But he only turned red and muttered to himself and strolled about with
his hands in his pockets, kicking the dead leaves as though he expected
to find something astonishing under them. And Stephanie glanced at him
sideways once or twice, thoughtfully, curiously, but questioned him no
further.

Gordon Collis pottered about in a neighbouring thicket; the fox terrier
was chasing chipmunks. As for Neville he had already sauntered out of
sight among the trees.

Stephanie, seated on a dry and mossy stump, preoccupied with her own
ruminations, looked up absently as Cameron came up to her bearing floral
offerings.

"Thank you, Sandy," she said, as he handed her a cluster of wild
blossoms. Then, fastening them to her waist, she glanced up
mischieviously:

"How funny you are! You look and act like a little boy at a party
presenting his first offering to the eternal feminine."

"It's my first offering," he said coolly.

"Oh, Sandy! With _your_ devilish record!"

"Do you know," he said, "that I'm thirty-two years old? And that you are
twenty-two? And that since you were twelve and I was twenty odd I've
been in love with you?"

She looked at him in blank dismay for a moment, then forced a laugh:

"Of course I know it, Sandy. It's the kind of love a girl cares most
about--"

"It's really love," said Cameron, un-smiling--"the kind I'm afraid she
doesn't care very much about."

[Illustration: "'If you'll place a lump of sugar on my nose, and say
"when," I'll perform.'"]