n she was silent until they reached the
_rond-point_.

There was that wonderful sense of aloofness and silence--hardly even the
noise of a bird. Only the green, green trees, and here and there a
shaft of sunlight turning them into the shade of a lizard's back.

An ideal spot for--poets and dreamers--and lovers--Theodora thought.

"Now we are here! Look this way and that! Five paths for us to choose
from!"

Then something made Theodora say, "Oh, let us stay in the centre, in
this one round place, where we can see them all and their
possibilities."

"And do you think uncertain possibilities are more agreeable perhaps
than certain ends?" he asked.

"I never speculate," said Theodora.

"As you will, then," he said, while he looked into her eyes, and he
placed the rug up against a giant tree between two avenues, so that
their view really only extended down three others now.

"We have turned our backs on the road we came," he said, "and on another
road that leads in a roundabout way to the Grande Avenue again. So now
we must look into the unknown and the future."

"It seems all very green and fair," said Theodora, and she leaned back
against the tree and half closed her eyes.

He lay on the grass at her feet, his hat thrown off beside him, and in
a desert island they could not have been more alone and undisturbed.

The greatest temptation that Hector Bracondale had ever yet had in his
life came to him then. To make love to her, to tell her of all the new
thoughts she had planted in his soul, of the windows she had opened wide
to the sunlight. To tell her that he loved her, that he longed to touch
even the tips of her fingers, that the thought of caressing her lips and
her eyes and her hair drove the blood coursing madly through his veins.
That to dream of what life could be like, if she were really his own,
was a dream of intoxicating bliss.

And something of all this gleamed in his eyes as he gazed up at her--and
Theodora, all unused to the turbulence of emotion, was troubled and
moved and yet wildly happy. She looked away down the centre avenue, and
she began to speak fast with a little catch in her breath, and Hector
clinched his hands together and gazed at a beetle in the grass, or
otherwise he would have taken her in his arms.

"Tell me the story of all these avenues," she said; "tell me a fairy
story suitable to the day."

And he fell in with her mood. So he began:

[Illustration: "Once Upon a Time Th