ou understand?"

"I understand," he answered. "You want me, in short, to join in a sort
of alliance against myself?"

"Put it any way you like," she said coldly.

"I am a perfectly harmless person," he declared, "who has never
wronged you in thought or deed. It is my misfortune that I have a
certain feeling for you which I honestly don't think you deserve."

She dropped the watering can and her eyes blazed at him.

"Not deserve?" she repeated.

"No!" he replied, trembling but standing his ground firmly. "Every
nice girl has a feeling of some sort for the man who is idiot enough
to be in love with her. I am just telling you this to let you know
that I can see your faults just as much as the things in you
which--which I worship. And good night!"...

Jacob sat out on the hillside until late, smoking stolidly and
dreaming. Inside the little white-plastered house below, from which
the lights were beginning to steal out, Sybil was busy preparing
supper and waiting upon her highly-pleased and triumphant parent.
Later, she too sat in the garden and watched the moon come up from
behind the dark belt of woodland which sheltered the reservoir.
Perhaps she dreamed of her prince to come, as the lonely man on the
hillside was dreaming of the things which she typified to him.

CHAPTER XI

Jacob sought distraction in the golfing resorts of England and the
Continent, tried mountaineering in Switzerland, at which he had some
success, and finally, with the entire Dauncey menage, took a small
moor near the sea in Scotland, and in the extreme well-being of
physical content found a species of happiness which sufficed well
enough for the time. It was early winter before he settled down in
London again, with the firm determination of neither writing to nor
making any enquiries concerning Sybil. Chance, however, brought him in
touch with her before many days were passed.

"Who is the smartly dressed, sunburnt little Johnny who is staring at
you so, Miss Bultiwell?" asked her _vis-a-vis_ at a luncheon party at
the Savoy one day. "His face seems familiar to me, but I can't place
him. I'm sure I've been told something interesting about him,
somewhere or other."

"That," Sybil replied coldly, glancing across the room towards a small
table against the wall, at which Jacob and Dauncey were seated, "is
Mr. Jacob Pratt."

Mason, one of the mysteries of smarter Bohemian life, a young man of
irreproachable appearance, a frequenter