uely. "What on earth has put all these
ridiculous notions into your head?"

Magda smiled at her. "I think it was four lines I read in a book
yesterday. They set me thinking."

"More's the pity then!" grumbled Gillian. "What were they?"

Magda was silent a moment, looking out over the sea with abstracted
eyes. It was so blue to-day--all blue and gold in the dancing sunlight.
But she knew that self-same sea could be grey--grey and chill as death.

Her glance came slowly back to Gillian's face as she quoted the fragment
of verse which had persisted in her thoughts:

"To-day and all the still unborn To-morrows
Have sprung from Yesterday. For Woe or Weal
The Soul is weighted by the Burden of Dead Days--
Bound to the unremitting Past with Ropes of Steel."

After a moment she added:

"Even you couldn't cut through 'ropes of steel,' my Gillyflower."

Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment.

"Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose
to send an announcement of your engagement to the _Morning Post_. You're
not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are you?"

"Oh, no. It was only that I didn't want to be pestered with
congratulations while we were down here. I suppose they'll have to come
some day"--with a small grimace of disgust.

"You'll be snowed under with them," Gillian assured her encouragingly.

The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda's return from
Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party
actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London was
fairly humming with the news. The papers were full of it. Portraits
of the fiances appeared side by side, together with brief histories
of their respective careers up to date, and accompanied by refreshing
details concerning their personal tastes.

"Dear me, I never knew Michael had a passion for raw meat before,"
remarked Magda, after reading various extracts from the different
accounts aloud for Gillian's edification.

"Has he?" Gillian was arranging flowers and spoke somewhat indistinctly,
owing to the fact that she had the stem of a chrysanthemum between her
lips.

"Yes, he must have. Listen to this, 'Mr. Quarrington's wonderful
creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since
we understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of
underdone cutlets--so lightly cooked, in fact,