as he glanced approvingly at the well-kept Tuscan landscape.
"Crocker needn't rub it in," he opined. "Why, it's the same scrubby
spruce tree from the Plains of Abraham to James's Bay-and Emma, who hated
being bored! Why, it's marriage by capture; it's barbaric." "It's worse;
it's rheumatic," shuddered Harwood as he declined Marsala and took
whisky. "But he'll have to bring her back to civilisation some time, if
only to hospital. We shall have her again." "He will bring her back, but
we shall never have her again," said Dennis solemnly. "She has renounced
us and all our works." "Renouncing our works isn't so difficult," smiled
Mrs. Dennis, and then the talk drifted elsewhere, to new Emmas who were
just beginning to eat the Tuscan lotus.

Before the year had turned to June again we had nearly forgotten our
runaways, when a quite unusual activity about her villa and Crocker's
warned us that they were coming back. Harwood had seen in transit a box
which he thought corresponded to the St. Michael's stature, but was not
sure. In a few days came a circular note from Crocker through Dennis
saying that they were fairly settled and he glad to see any or all of
us. She, however, was still fatigued by the journey and must for a time
keep her room.

Harwood straightway volunteered to undertake the preliminary
reconnaissance, while Frau Stern engaged to penetrate to Emma herself.

On a beatific afternoon we sat in council on Dennis's terrace awaiting
the envoys. Below, the misty plain rose on and on till it gathered into
an amber surge in Monte Morello and rippled away again through the
Fiesolan hills. Nearer, torrid bell-towers pierced the shimmering reek,
like stakes in a sweltering lagoon. In the centre of all, the great dome
swam lightly, a gigantic celestial buoy in a vaporous sea. The spell that
bound us all was doubly potent that day. The sense of a continuous life
that had made the dome and the belfries an inevitable emanation from the
clean crumbling earth, lulled us all, and we hardly stirred when Harwood
bustled in, saying, "Cheer up. I have seen Crocker, and it isn't there."
"You mean," said the cautious Dennis, "that Crocker still possesses only
the hole, aperture, frame, or niche that the missing St. Michael may yet
adorn." "I only know that it isn't there now," growled Harwood. "I deal
merely in facts, but you may get theories, if you must have them, from
Frau Stern, who heroically forced her way to Emma over Crocker