first dots and pricks of green, and the afternoon was pleasant for
walking--sunless and still, and just a little fragrantly damp from all
the rife budding and sprouting. It was a day to further a friendship
more effectually than half a dozen brighter ones; a day on which to
speak out thoughts which a June sky, the indiscreet playing of full
sunlight, even the rustling of the breeze in the leaves might scare,
like fish, from the surface.

When they had laughingly introduced themselves to each other Maurice
Guest's companion talked about herself, with a frankness that left
nothing to be desired, and impressed the young man at her side very
agreeably. Before they had gone far, he knew all about her. Her name
was Madeleine Wade; she came from a small town in Leicestershire, and,
except for a step-brother, stood alone in the world. For several years,
she had been a teacher in a large school near London, and the position
was open for her to return to, when she had completed this, the final
year of her course. Then, however, she would devote herself exclusively
to the teaching of music, and, with this in view, she had here taken up
as many branches of study as she had time for. Besides piano, which was
her chief subject, she learned singing, organ, counterpoint, and the
elements of the violin.

"So much is demanded nowadays," she said in her dear soprano. "And if
you want to get on, it doesn't do to be behindhand. Of course, it means
hard work, but that is nothing to me--I am used to work and love it.
Since I was seventeen--I am twenty-six now--I can fairly say I have
never got up in the morning, without having my whole day mapped and
planned before me.--So you see idlers can have no place on my list of
saints."

She spoke lightly, yet with a certain under-meaning. As, however,
Maurice Guest, on whom her words made a sympathetic impression, as of
something strong and self-reliant--as he did not respond to it, she
fell back on directness, and asked him what he had been doing when she
met him, both on this day and the one before.

"I tell you candidly, I was astonished to find you there again," she
said. "As a rule, new-comers are desperately earnest brooms."

His laugh was a trifle uneasy; and he answered evasively, not meaning
to say much. But he had reckoned without the week of silence that lay
behind him; it had been more of a strain than he knew, and his pent-up
speech once set agoing could not be brought to a stop. A