nd kissed his hand almost with the avidity of hunger, as it
clasped hers on his shoulder.

She released herself slowly and lightly dabbed her eyes.

"When are you going away?" he demanded gravely.

"The day after to-morrow," she replied.

"Write to me as usual," he said.

She caught his hand and grasped it firmly. "Oh, Lord Henry, be the same
to me!" she pleaded.

He laughed the plea to scorn. "Of course I'll always be the same to you.
What do you think?"

She saw that he meant it and moved lightly towards the door. "I must be
going," she said, putting away her handkerchief, and trying to control
an awkward catch in her breath which was reminiscent of her weeping.

He urged her to stay for lunch; he offered to have her fetched by the
Sanatorium car; he begged to be allowed to accompany her back to
Ashbury; but she stalwartly refused; and in a moment he and St. Maur
were watching her, sprightly as a girl, tripping back along the dusty
road to the station.

"My boy, my dear boy," he muttered to St. Maur, "that is what she felt,
that is what she said. The unconscious voice in her knew the desired
relationship and expressed the wish, although the conscious mind thought
only of 'husband.'"

CHAPTER IX

"So inexhaustibly rich is the sun that even when it goes down it pours
its gold into the very depths of the sea; and then even the poorest
boatman rows with golden oars."

Thus spoke the greatest poet of the nineteenth century, and thus all
generations of men have felt.

The warm rich colour, as of ripeness, that it gives to the youngest
cheek, the tawny tinge as of jungle fauna with which it vitalises every
dead-white urban hand, and the enchanting glamour it lends to the
plainest head and face,--these are a few of the works of the sun that
are surely a proof of its demoniacal glory. Halos, it is true, it
fashions as well, and beyond reckoning; but the white teeth that flash
from the tanned mask are scarcely those of a saint. Or has a saint
actually been known who really had white teeth of his own?

August in England, between the moist wood-clad hills and the blinding
glitter of the sea; August in a beautiful country homestead, with its
flowering garden, its cool carpet of lawn stretching to a black line of
thick hedgerow which seems to be the last barrier between earth and
ocean,--what a season it is, and what a setting for the greatest game
of youth, the game of catch as catch can, with a cheerless