wed him out under the porch, and stood bracing her
supple body clothed in lilac linen. Red rambler roses formed a sort of
crown to her dark head; her ivory-coloured face had in it just a
suggestion of the Japanese.

Mr. Bosengate spoke through the whirr of the engine:

"I don't expect to be late, dear. This business is ridiculous. There
oughtn't to be any crime in these days."

His wife--her name was Kathleen--smiled. She looked very pretty and
cool, Mr. Bosengate thought. To him bound on this dull and stuffy
business everything he owned seemed pleasant--the geranium beds beside
the gravel drive, his long, red-brick house mellowing decorously in its
creepers and ivy, the little clock-tower over stables now converted to a
garage, the dovecote, masking at the other end the conservatory which
adjoined the billiard-room. Close to the red-brick lodge his two
children, Kate and Harry, ran out from under the acacia trees, and waved
to him, scrambling bare-legged on to the low, red, ivy-covered wall which
guarded his domain of eleven acres. Mr. Bosengate waved back, thinking:
'Jolly couple--by Jove, they are!' Above their heads, through the trees,
he could see right away to some Downs, faint in the July heat haze. And
he thought: 'Pretty a spot as one could have got, so close to Town!'

Despite the war he had enjoyed these last two years more than any of the
ten since he built "Charmleigh" and settled down to semi-rural
domesticity with his young wife. There had been a certain piquancy, a
savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the public
service and sacrifice it demanded. His chauffeur was gone, and one
gardener did the work of three. He enjoyed-positively enjoyed, his
committee work; even the serious decline of business and increase of
taxation had not much worried one continually conscious of the national
crisis and his own part therein. The country had wanted waking up,
wanted a lesson in effort and economy; and the feeling that he had not
spared himself in these strenuous times, had given a zest to those quiet
pleasures of bed and board which, at his age, even the most patriotic
could retain with a good conscience. He had denied himself many
things--new clothes, presents for Kathleen and the children, travel, and
that pine-apple house which he had been on the point of building when the
war broke out; new wine, too, and cigars, and membership of the two Clubs
which he had never used in the