is a clear case of belated honeymoon."

Here Ben scrambled to his feet, his broad, good-humored face crimson
from groveling.

"Deena, good-day to you," he cried. "How perfectly stunning you look!
I declare I thought Polly was the pick of the Sheltons, but, by Jove!
you are running her hard. What have you been doing to yourself?"

Stephen French was delighted--he laughed his slow, reluctant laugh,
and then he called to Ben:

"Turn round and see whether you dropped them in the road."

"Dropped what?" asked Ben, his hand on the lever, making a black
semicircle.

"Your manners," said Stephen, and chuckled again.

"You go to thunder," roared Ben, shooting ahead. "A poor, wretched
bachelor like you instructing a married man how to treat his
sister-in-law, and just because once upon a time I sat in your lecture
room and let you bore me by the hour about protoplasms! Do you suppose
I should dare admit to Polly that Deena is as handsome as she is? Why,
man alive, a Russian warship off Port Arthur would be a place of
safety compared to this automobile."

Deena, laughing though embarrassed, was trying to cover the
countenance that provoked the discussion with a veil, for her hat
strained at its pins and threatened to blow back to Harmouth before
the knotty point was settled as to who should pay for it.

They were flying between fields strewn with Michaelmas daisies and
wooded banks gay with the first kiss of frost, and gradually Deena
forgot everything but the exhilaration of rushing through the air, and
their attitude of holiday-making. She was thoroughly at her ease with
French; he was Simeon's one intimate in the corps of professors, the
only creature who was ever welcome at the Ponsonby table, the one
discerning soul who found something to admire in Simeon's harsh
dealings with himself and the world. Their line of study naturally
drew them together, but Stephen admired the man as well as the
scholar; the purity of his scientific ambition, the patience with
which he bore his poverty--for poverty seemed a serious thing to
French, who was a man of independent fortune, and whose connection
with the university was a matter of predilection only. With Ponsonby
it was bread and butter, and yet he had ventured to marry with nothing
but his splendid brain between his wife and absolute want. French
stole a glance at Deena, who was looking more beautiful than he had
ever seen her, and wondered whether she found her lot satisfac