o help.
And I shouldn't grumble to you if there were anyone else to grumble to."
She leaned back against her sheaf with her eyes on the sunlit water
below. "I suppose I shall just go on in the same old way till something
happens. Anyhow, I can't see my way out at present. It's such a shame to
be unhappy, too, when life might be so ecstatic."

"How could life be ecstatic?" asked Hugh, passing up his cup to be
refilled.

She threw him a quick glance. "You wouldn't understand if I were to tell
you," she said. "It never could be--for you."

He sighed. "I know I'm very limited. But it's a mistake to expect too
much from life, believe me. Ask but little, and perhaps--if you're
lucky--you won't be disappointed."

"I would rather have nothing than that," she said quickly.

Hugh Chesyl turned and regarded her curiously. "Would you really?" he
said.

She nodded several times emphatically. "Yes; just live my own life
out-of-doors and do without everything else." She pulled a long stalk of
corn from the sheaf against which she rested and looked at it
thoughtfully. Her eyes were downcast, and the man in the punt could not
see the deep shadow of pain they held. "If I can't have corn," she said
slowly, with the air of one pronouncing sentence, "I won't have husks. I
will die of starvation sooner."

And with that very suddenly she rose and walked round the sheaf.

The movement was abrupt, so abrupt that Hugh Chesyl lifted his brows in
astonishment. He was still more surprised a moment later when he heard
her clear, girlish voice raised in admonition.

"I don't think it's very nice of you to lie there listening and not to
let us know."

Hugh sat upright in the punt. Who on earth was it that she was reproving
thus?

The next moment he saw. A huge man with the frame of a bull rose from
behind the sheaf and confronted his young companion. He had his hat in
his hand, and the afternoon sun fell full upon his uncovered head,
revealing a rugged, clean-shaven face that had in it a good deal of
British strength and a suspicion of gipsy alertness. To Chesyl's further
amazement he did not appear in the least abashed by the encounter.

"I'm sorry I overheard you," he said, with blunt deference. "I was
half-asleep at first. Afterwards, I didn't like to intrude."

Doris's grey eyes looked him up and down for a moment or two in
silence, and a flush rose in her tanned face. It seemed to Hugh that she
was likely to become the more embar