did himself, all would be well. She and Harry had
been good friends from the outset. He hoped--he believed--she would
understand.

Light footsteps on the boards behind him brought a smile to his lips;
but he neither turned nor stirred. An instant later, hands cool and
imponderable as snowflakes rested on his forehead, and silken strands
of hair brushed it softly as his wife leaned over him, nestling her
head against his own.

"Are you very happy sitting there?" she whispered.

"Supremely happy."

"Why? Because you're so nice and wet, and messy?"

"Yes; and a few other reasons as well."

"What other reasons? Me?"

"Naturally, you dear little goose! Come round and let me get a sight
of you, instead of perching behind me like a bird."

She came round obediently, standing a little away from him,--a slim
strip of colour that reflected the uncertain sea-tint of her
eyes,--and looked down upon his disordered appearance with a small
grimace.

"I'm not _sure_ that I love you properly, Theo, when you're _quite_ as
muddy as that."

"Oh yes, you do; come on!"

And putting out an arm, he drew her down till she knelt beside him,
her hands resting on his knee. He covered them quietly with one of his
own.

"Ladybird, it's turning out a glorious evening! Come for a walk."

"Oh, Theo, _don't_ be so uncomfortably energetic! I hate going out in
the wet. You only came in half an hour ago, and you've been walking
all day."

He laughed--the glad laugh of a truant schoolboy--and knocked the
ashes out of his pipe.

"I'm capable of walking all night too! Only then you might imagine the
hot weather had turned my brain. But indeed, little woman, if you had
been sickened with sunlight and scorched earth as I have been for the
last three months, you'd understand how a man may feel a bit
lightheaded in the first few days that he's quit of it all."

"And was I very horrid to be playing up here in the cool all the
time?" she asked, pricked by the memory of Honor's words to one of her
rare touches of compunction.

"My dear, what nonsense! It would have been double as bad if you had
been there too."

Sincerity rang in his tone, and she noted the fact with a sigh of
relief. She was not altogether heartless, this fragile slip of
womanhood. She merely desired, like many of us, the comfort of being
selfish without the unbecomingness of appearing so.

"We'll sit out here together and talk till it gets dark," she
announced with a pr