hing on the horizon--" She broke off. "Shall you be near the sea?"

"My notion of perfect happiness," he began, not replying to her
question, "is to live as you've said."

"Well, now you can. You will work, I suppose," she continued; "you'll
work all the morning and again after tea and perhaps at night. You won't
have people always coming about you to interrupt."

"How far can one live alone?" he asked. "Have you tried ever?"

"Once for three weeks," she replied. "My father and mother were in
Italy, and something happened so that I couldn't join them. For three
weeks I lived entirely by myself, and the only person I spoke to was a
stranger in a shop where I lunched--a man with a beard. Then I went back
to my room by myself and--well, I did what I liked. It doesn't make me
out an amiable character, I'm afraid," she added, "but I can't endure
living with other people. An occasional man with a beard is interesting;
he's detached; he lets me go my way, and we know we shall never meet
again. Therefore, we are perfectly sincere--a thing not possible with
one's friends."

"Nonsense," Denham replied abruptly.

"Why 'nonsense'?" she inquired.

"Because you don't mean what you say," he expostulated.

"You're very positive," she said, laughing and looking at him. How
arbitrary, hot-tempered, and imperious he was! He had asked her to come
to Kew to advise him; he then told her that he had settled the question
already; he then proceeded to find fault with her. He was the very
opposite of William Rodney, she thought; he was shabby, his clothes
were badly made, he was ill versed in the amenities of life; he was
tongue-tied and awkward to the verge of obliterating his real character.
He was awkwardly silent; he was awkwardly emphatic. And yet she liked
him.

"I don't mean what I say," she repeated good-humoredly. "Well--?"

"I doubt whether you make absolute sincerity your standard in life," he
answered significantly.

She flushed. He had penetrated at once to the weak spot--her engagement,
and had reason for what he said. He was not altogether justified now, at
any rate, she was glad to remember; but she could not enlighten him
and must bear his insinuations, though from the lips of a man who
had behaved as he had behaved their force should not have been sharp.
Nevertheless, what he said had its force, she mused; partly because he
seemed unconscious of his own lapse in the case of Mary Datchet, and
thus baffled her insigh