ce
filled the air. She looked round in spite of herself and found a bunch of
exquisite lilies-of-the-valley close to her cheek. She lifted her eyes
with a great start.

"Edward!"

His face was red. He looked supremely ill at ease. He pushed the flowers
under her nose. "Take 'em for heaven's sake!" he said irritably. "I hate
the things myself."

She took them, too amazed for comment, and buried her face in their
perfumed depths.

He stood beside her, impatiently clicking his fingers. There fell an
uncomfortable silence, during which Vera gradually remembered her dignity
and at length laid the flowers aside. Her agitation had subsided. She sat
and waited noncommittally for the new situation to develop. Even in their
engagement days he had never brought her flowers, and any overture from
him after a quarrel was a thing unknown.

She waited therefore, not looking at him, and in a few moments, very
awkwardly, with obvious reluctance, he spoke again.

"I don't think we want to keep this up any longer, do we? Seems a bit
senseless, what? I'm ready to forget it if you are."

Again, she was taken by surprise, for his voice had a curious urgency
that made her aware that he for one had certainly had enough of it, and
there was that in her which leaped in swift response. But it was not to
be expected of her that she should be willing to bury the hatchet at a
moment's notice after the treatment she had received, and she checked the
unaccountable impulse.

"There are some things that it is not easy to forget," she said coldly.

His demeanour changed in an instant. "Oh, all right," he said, "if you
prefer to sulk!"

He swung upon his heel. In a moment he would have been gone; but in that
moment the inner force that Vera had ignored suddenly sprang above every
other emotion or consideration. She put out a quick hand and stayed him.

"I am not sulking! I never sulk! But I can't behave--all in a moment--as
if nothing had happened. Edward!"

It was her voice that held pleading now, for he made as if he would leave
her in spite of her detaining hold. She tightened her fingers on his arm.

"Edward, please!" she said.

He stopped. "Well?" he said gruffly. Then, as she said nothing
further, he turned slowly and looked at her. Her head was bent. She
was striving for self-control. Something in her attitude went straight
to the man's heart. She looked so small, so forlorn, so pathetic in
her struggle for dignity.

On a genero