ain hidden beneath her nonchalance.

It seemed as though her whole nature had undergone a change. Alone with
him she was no longer the assured woman of the world, the spoilt and
feted dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a little
shy, almost diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the splendid
candour and simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love, but goes
courageously to meet it and all that it demands of her.

She was fugitively sweet and tender with Coppertop, and now and then her
eyes would shine with a quiet, dreaming light as though she visioned a
future wherein someone like Coppertop, only littler, might lie in the
crook of her arm.

Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found
together, Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and
dragons such as Coppertop's small soul delighted in. On one such
occasion, at the end of a particularly thrilling narrative, he sat back
on his heels and regarded her with a certain wistful anxiety.

"I suppose," he asked rather forlornly, "when you're married they'll
give you a little boy like me, Fairy Lady, won't they?"

The clear, warm colour ran up swiftly beneath her skin.

"Perhaps so, Topkins," she answered very low.

He heaved a big sigh. "He'll be a very _lucky_ little boy," he said
plaintively. "If Mummie couldn't have been my mummie, I'd have choosed
you."

And so, in this tender atmosphere of peace and contentment, the summer
slipped by until it was time for Magda to think of going back to London.
The utter content and happiness of these weeks almost frightened her
sometimes.

"It can't last, Gilly," she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an
access of superstitious fear. "It simply _can't_ last! No one was meant
to be as happy as I am!"

"I think we were all meant to be happy," replied Gillian simply. "Happy
and good!" she added, laughing.

"Yes. But I haven't been particularly good. I've just done whatever it
occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I
shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day."

Gillian smiled.

"Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out
of them," she said cheerfully.

"Perhaps--perhaps you wouldn't be able to."

There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda's voice--an accent of
fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of
uneasiness.

"Nonsense!" she said brusq