er foot. Her type was misleading
only to the superficial, and no one in the world was less superficial
than Fleda. She had guessed the truth at Waterbath and she had suffered
from it at Poynton; at Ricks the only thing she could do was to accept
it with the dumb exaltation that she felt rising. Mona had been prompt
with her exercise of the member in question, for it might be called
prompt to do that sort of thing before marriage. That she had indeed
been premature who should say save those who should have read the matter
in the full light of results? Neither at Waterbath nor at Poynton had
even Fleda's thoroughness discovered all that there was--or rather, all
that there was not--in Owen Gereth. "Of course it makes all the
difference!" she said in answer to his last words. She pursued, after
considering: "What you wish me to say from you then to your mother is
that you demand immediate and practically complete restitution?"

"Yes, please. It's tremendously good of you."

"Very well, then. Will you wait?"

"For Mummy's answer?" Owen stared and looked perplexed; he was more and
more fevered with so much vivid expression of his case. "Don't you think
that if I'm here she may hate it worse--think I may want to make her
reply bang off?"

Fleda thought. "You don't, then?"

"I want to take her in the right way, don't you know?--treat her as if I
gave her more than just an hour or two."

"I see," said Fleda. "Then, if you don't wait--good-bye."

This again seemed not what he wanted. "Must _you_ do it bang off?"

"I'm only thinking she'll be impatient--I mean, you know, to learn what
will have passed between us."

"I see," said Owen, looking at his gloves. "I can give her a day or two,
you know. Of course I didn't come down to sleep," he went on. "The inn
seems a horrid hole. I know all about the trains--having no idea you
were here." Almost as soon as his interlocutress he was struck with the
absence of the visible, in this, as between effect and cause. "I mean
because in that case I should have felt I could stop over. I should have
felt I could talk with you a blessed sight longer than with Mummy."

"We've already talked a long time," smiled Fleda.

"Awfully, haven't we?" He spoke with the stupidity she didn't object to.
Inarticulate as he was, he had more to say; he lingered perhaps because
he was vaguely aware of the want of sincerity in her encouragement to
him to go. "There's one thing, please," he mentioned, a