y soul."

"Yes," he agreed with intense bitterness. "I think they did. One day,
Magda some man will kill you. You'll try him too far."

"Indeed? Is that what you contemplate doing when you finally lose
patience with me?"

He shook his head.

"I shall not lose patience--until you are another man's wife," he said
quietly. "And I don't intend you to be that."

An hour later, Gillian, having dispatched her small son to bed and seen
him safely tucked up between the lavender-scented sheets, discovered
Magda alone in the low-raftered sitting-room. She was lying back idly in
a chair, her hands resting on the arms, in her eyes a curious abstracted
look as though she were communing with herself.

Apparently she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice Gillian's
entrance, for she did not speak.

"What are you thinking about? Planning a new dance that shall out-vie
_The Swan-Maiden_?" asked Gillian at last, for the sake of something to
say. The silence and Magda's strange aloofness frightened her in some
way.

It was quite a moment before Magda made any answer. When she did, it was
to say with a bitter kind of wonder in her voice:

"What centuries ago it seems since the first night of _The
Swan-Maiden_!"

"It's not very long," began Gillian, then checked herself and asked
quickly: "Is there anything the matter, Magda? Did Antoine bring you bad
news of some kind?"

"He brought me the offering of his hand and heart. That's no news, is
it?"

The opening was too good to be lost. With the remembrance of June's
wistful face before her eyes, Gillian plunged in recklessly.

"Apropos of such offerings--don't you think it would be wiser if you
weren't quite so nice to Dan Storran?"

"Am I nice to him?"

"Too much so for my peace of mind--or his! It worries me, Magda--really.
You'll play with fire once too often."

"My dear Gillian, I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. Do you
imagine"--with a small, fine smile--"that I'm in danger of losing my
heart to a son of the soil?"

Gillian could have shaken her.

"_You?_ You don't suppose I'm afraid for you! It's Dan Storran who isn't
able to look after himself." She stooped over Magda's chair and slipped
an arm persuasively round her shoulders. "Come away, Magda. Let's leave
Stockleigh--go home to London."

"Certainly not." Magda stood up suddenly. "I'm quite well amused down
here. I don't propose to leave till our time is up."

She spoke with unmistaka