to you!" The crowd surged round them,
struggling to see his picture, ejaculating banal words of admiration.
"You do not doubt!" he whispered tensely.

The blood came back to her face at last. "No! But the how?--the why?"

"She sought her release!"

"She suspected the truth!" She was pale again.

"We cheated ourselves. She cared for one of her own kind. Our
renunciation was an irony."

Lady Betty bent her head. Her brow was wrinkled for a moment in thought,
and her hand trembled visibly.

"An irony--no," she said gently. "We were true to ourselves--the future
lies the fairer before us."

The press around them grew closer.

"Mais c'est chic ca!"

"Un beau talent!"

"C'est exquis!"

She took his arm, as if seeking freer air, and they moved through the
throng that continued its compliments, unsuspecting of the proximity of
either artist or subject. They stood at last on the great balcony, and
looked down on the splendid court agleam with sculpture and greenery.

"I have searched Europe for you!" he said.

"This great change in our lives--it is too wonderful to grasp all at
once," she murmured musingly.

"I do not see why we should not stroll round to the Embassy now, and
inquire," he suggested stoutly.

"Inquire about what?" she asked, her deep absent look changing to
bewilderment.

"As to when they can marry us, of course!"

"Oh, I see," she said, with a quick smile; but her glance was inward
again.

"You don't think me precipitate?" he asked uneasily.

"I am thinking of Alice," she returned. "I could have sworn she was the
soul of constancy."

THE END.

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRAHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.

LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY
BROWN, LANGHAM & CO.,
78 NEW BOND STREET, LONDON, W.

Life of the Right Hon Thomas Burt, M.P.

By AARON WATSON.

With Portrait and Illustrations. 8vo. 15s. net.

Mr. Burt's life is indissolubly bound up with the rise of the Labour
Movement in this country.

"Mr. Aaron Watson places at the beginning of his deeply interesting
biography of Mr. Thomas Burt the following tribute, paid to the
veteran labour leader by Earl Grey: 'The finest gentleman I ever knew
was a working miner in England, whose gentleness, absolute fairness,
instinctive horror of anything underhand or mean, or anything that
was not the strictest fair-play, gave him a character that enabled
him to rise to the position of Privy Councillor.' Never