her own
brave heart.

CHAPTER IV

FIRELIGHT IN THE STUDIO

It was Ronnie's last evening in England. The parting, which had seemed
so far away, must take place on the morrow. It took all Helen's bright
courage to keep up Ronnie's spirits.

After dinner they sat together in a room they still called the studio,
although Helen had given up her painting, soon after their marriage.

It was a large old-fashioned room, oak-panelled and spacious.

A huge mirror, in a massive gilt frame, hung upon the wall opposite door
and fireplace, reaching from the ceiling to the parquet floor.

Ronald, who used the studio as a smoking-room, had introduced three or
four deep wicker chairs, comfortably cushioned, and a couple of oriental
tables.

The fireplace lent itself grandly in winter to great log-fires, when
the crimson curtains were drawn in ample folds over the many windows,
shutting out the dank bleakness of the park without, and imparting a
look of cosiness to the empty room.

A dozen old family portraits--banished from more important places,
because their expressions annoyed Ronnie--were crowded into whatever
space was available, and glowered down, from the bad light to which they
had been relegated, on the very modern young man whose uncomplimentary
remarks had effected their banishment, and who sprawled luxuriously in
the firelight, monarch of all he surveyed, in the domain which for
centuries had been their own.

The only other thing in the room was a piano, on which Ronnie very
effectively and very inaccurately strummed by ear; and on which Helen,
with careful skill, played his accompaniments, when he was seized with a
sudden desire to sing.

Ronald's music was always a perplexity to Helen. There was a quality
about it so extraordinarily, so unusually, beautiful; combined with an
entire lack of method or of training, and a quite startling ignorance of
the most rudimentary rules.

On one occasion, during a sharp attack of influenza, when he had
insisted upon being down and about, with a temperature of 104, he
suddenly rose from the depths of a chair in which he had been lying,
talking wild and feverish nonsense; stumbled over to the piano, dropped
heavily upon the stool, then proceeded to play and sing, in a way, which
brought tears to his wife's eyes, while her heart stood still with
anxiety and wonder.

Yet, when she mentioned it a few days later, he appeared to have
forgotten all about it, turning the