The Saint Martin's summer lasted to the beginning of December, and then
it came to an end, and with it the idyll of Aristide and Anne Honeywood.

One Saturday afternoon, when the rain was falling dismally, she received
him with an embarrassment she could scarcely conceal. The usual
heightened colour no longer gave youth to her cheek; an anxious frown
knitted her candid brows; and there was no laughter in her eyes. He
looked at her questioningly. Was anything the matter with Jean? But Jean
answered the question for himself by running down the passage and
springing like a puppy into Aristide's arms. Anne turned her face away,
as if the sight pained her, and, pleading a headache and the desire to
lie down, she left the two together. Returning after a couple of hours
with the tea-tray, she found them on the floor breathlessly absorbed in
the erection of card pagodas. She bit her lip and swallowed a sob.
Aristide jumped up and took the tray. Was not the headache better? He
was so grieved. Jean must be very quiet and drink up his milk quietly
like a hero because Auntie was suffering. Tea was a very subdued affair.
Then Anne carried off Jean to bed, refusing Aristide's helpful
ministrations. It was his Saturday and Sunday joy to bath Jean amid a
score of crawly tin insects which he had provided for the child's
ablutionary entertainment, and it formed the climax of Jean's blissful
day. But this afternoon Anne tore the twain asunder. Aristide looked
mournfully over the rain-swept common through the leaded panes, and
speculated on the enigma of woman. A man, feeling ill, would have been
only too glad for somebody to do his work; but a woman, just because she
was ill, declined assistance. Surely women were an intellect-baffling
sex.

She came back, having put Jean to bed.

"My dear friend," she said, with a blurt of bravery, "I have something
very hard to say, but I must say it. You must go away from Beverly
Stoke."

"Ah!" cried Aristide, "is it I, then, that give you a headache?"

"It's not your fault," she said gently. "You have been everything that a
loyal gentleman could be--and it's because you're a loyal gentleman that
you must go."

"I don't understand," said he, puzzled. "I must go away because I give
you a headache, although it is not my fault."

"It's nothing to do with headaches," she explained. "Don't you see?
People around here are talking."

"About you and me?"

"Yes," said Miss Anne, faintly.

"_Saprelo