se
one's way, and one may even falter if the path is rugged. But the star
remains."

She sighed. Her eyes seemed to have wandered away. He felt that it was
a trick to avoid looking at him for the moment.

"I do not want you to go to Manchester on Monday in your present mood,"
she said. "I hate to think of you up there, the stormy petrel, the
apostle of unrest and sedition. If I were a Roman woman, I think that I
would poison you to-night at dinner-time."

"Quite an idea," he remarked. "I am not at all sure that our having
become too civilised for crime is a healthy sign of the times."

"I do wish," she persisted, "that you would try and see things a little
more humanly. My uncle is full of enthusiasms about you. You have had
some conversation already, haven't you?"

"We talked for an hour after luncheon," Maraton admitted. "Your uncle's
is a very sane point of view. I know just how he regards me--a sort of
dangerous enthusiast, a firebrand with the knack of commanding
attention. The worst of it is that when I am with him, he almost makes
me feel like that myself."

She laughed.

"All men of genius," she declared, "must be impressionable. We ought to
set ourselves to discover your weak point."

He smiled at her with upraised eyebrows. There were times when he
seemed to her like a boy.

"Haven't you discovered it?"

She made a little face and swung her parasol around. When she spoke
again, she was very grave.

"Mr. Maraton," she begged, "please will you promise that before you go
away, you will talk to me again for a few minutes?"

"It is a promise easily made!" he replied.

"But I mean seriously."

"I will talk to you at any time, anyhow you wish," he promised.

She rose to her feet then.

"For the present you have promised to play tennis," she reminded him.
"Please go and change your things."

"I must have a yellow rosebud for my button-hole," he begged.

She arranged it herself in his coat. He laughed as she swept aside a
wisp of her hair which brushed his cheek.

"What a picture for the photographic Press of America!" he exclaimed.
"The anarchist of Chicago and the Prime Minister's niece!"

"What is an anarchist?" she asked him abruptly. He opened the little
iron gate which led out of the garden.

"A sower of fire and destruction," he answered, "a highly unpleasant
person to meet when he's in earnest."

She looked into his face for a moment with a wistfulness which was
almost passionate.