and away from him, and always if he tried to have it out with her
asked him with patient obstinacy what he thought the things he wrote
and lived by looked in the eyes of God. "No one," she said once,
"should ever write a book God wouldn't like to read. That is the test,
Frederick." And he had laughed hysterically, burst into a great shriek
of laughter, and rushed out of the house, away from her solemn little
face--away from her pathetic, solemn little face. . .

But this Rose was his youth again, the best part of his life, the
part of it that had had all the visions in it and all the hopes. How
they had dreamed together, he and she, before he struck that vein of
memoirs; how they had planned, and laughed and loved. They had lived
for a while in the very heart of poetry. After the happy days came the
happy nights, the happy, happy nights, with her asleep close against
his heart, with her when he woke in the morning still close against his
heart, for they hardly moved in their deep, happy sleep. It was
wonderful to have it all come back to him at the touch of her, at the
feel of her face against his--wonderful that she should be able to give
him back his youth.

"Sweetheart--sweetheart," he murmured, overcome by remembrance,
clinging to her now in his turn.

"Beloved husband," she breathed--the bliss of it--the sheer bliss
. . .

Briggs, coming in a few minutes before the gong went on the
chance that Lady Caroline might be there, was much astonished. He had
supposed Rose Arbuthnot was a widow, and he still supposed it; so that
he was much astonished.

"Well I'm damned," thought Briggs, quite clearly and distinctly,
for the shock of what he saw in the window startled him so much that
for a moment he was shaken free of his own confused absorption.

Aloud he said, very red, "Oh I say--I beg your pardon"--and then
stood hesitating, and wondering whether he oughtn't to go back to his
bedroom again.

If he had said nothing they would not have noticed he was there,
but when he begged their pardon Rose turned and looked at him as one
looks who is trying to remember, and Frederick looked at him too
without at first quite seeing him.

They didn't seem, thought Briggs, to mind or to be at all
embarrassed. He couldn't be her brother; no brother ever brought that
look into a woman's face. It was very awkward. If they didn't mind,
he did. It upset him to come across his Madonna forgetting herself.

"Is this one