celebrate in the studio the lucky occasion. They had wandered arm in arm
through the green alleys and orderly byways of the mellow suburb,
dreaming away all sense of time and space. It was the very culmination
of St. Luke's summer, and nowhere had the glories been more richly
displayed. Robins sang in Well Walk, and Michaelmas daisies splashed
every garden with constellations of vivid mauve. After tea they walked
up Heath Street and on a wooden seat stayed to watch the sunset. Below
them the Heath rolled away in grassland to houses whose smoke was heavy
on the dull crimson of a stormy dusk. The sun sank with an absence of
effect which chilled them both. Night, with a cold wind that heralded
rain, came hard on the heels of twilight. The mist rose thickly from the
lower parts of the Heath, and the night's jewelry was blurred.

Maurice spoke suddenly as if to a signal.

"Jenny, we seem to have spent a very long time together now in finding
out nothing."

"What _do_ you mean?" she asked.

"I mean--we've been together a frightful lot, but I don't know anything
about you and you don't know anything about me."

"I know you're a darling."

"Yes, I know that, but----"

"What!" she broke in, "well, if you don't properly go out with
yourself."

"No, I mean--bother about me being a darling--what I mean is--what are
we going to do?"

"What do you want us to do?"

"You don't help me out," he complained. "Look here, are you really in
love with me?"

"Of course I am," she said softly.

"Yes, but really violently, madly in love to the exclusion of everything
else in the world?"

"Kiss me," said Jenny, answering him from her heart.

"Kissing's too easy," said Maurice. "Kissing proves nothing. You've
probably kissed dozens of men."

"Well, why not?"

"Why not? Good Heavens, if I give up my whole being to you, do you mean
to say you're not going to think anything of kissing dozens of men?"

"Don't be silly. To begin with, they did all the kissing."

"That makes no difference."

"I think it makes all the difference."

"I don't," he maintained.

"I do."

"Look here, don't let's quarrel," he said.

"I'm not quarrelling. You began."

"All right. I know I did. Only do think things out."

"What's the matter with your brain to-night?" Jenny asked.

"Why?"

"You've taken a sudden craze for thinking."

"Oh, do be serious," he said petulantly. "Here are we. We meet. We fall
in love at once. We roam about Lond