ossibly be? You, of all people!"
There she was again.

But he intended to make peace once and for all. "My dearest, I can't
be more abject, for the life of me. I have confessed that I was an
abounding ass. Please to believe in me. Ask Francis Lingen to tea for
a month of days--and not a word from me!"

She had laughed, rather scornfully, and tried to free herself. He
kissed her again before he let her go. Almost immediately he resumed
his habits--eyeglass, _Morning Post_, and scraps of comment. He made
an effort and succeeded, he thought, in being himself. "Johnny Mallet
gives another party at the Bachelors to-day. I believe I go. Has he
asked you? He means to. He's a tufthunter--but he gets tufts.... I see
that the Fathers in God are raving about the Tithe Bill. I shall have
Jasper Mellen at me--and the Dean too. Do you remember--did you ever
hear, I wonder, of _Box and Cox_? They have a knack of coming to me on
the same day. Once they met on the doorstep, and each of them turned
and fled away. It must have been very comic...." Lucy busied herself
with her letters and her coffee-cups. She wished that she did not feel
so ruffled, but--a walk would do her good. She would go into the Park
presently, and look at the tulips and lilacs. It was horrid to feel so
stuffy on such a perfect day. How long to Whitsuntide? That was to be
heavenly--if James didn't get inspired by the dark! Something would
have to be prepared for that. In her eyes, sedate though they were,
there lurked a gleam: the beacon-fire of a woman beleaguered.
Certainly Jimmy Urquhart liked her. He had said that she liked him.
Well, and so she did. Very much indeed.

James went, forgiven, to his Bishops and Deans, and to lunch with his
Johnny Mallet and the tufted. Lucy, her household duties done, arrayed
herself for the tulips of the Park.

The grey watches of the night with their ache and moments of panic,
the fever and fret, the wearing down of rage and emptying of wonder
and dismay, the broken snatches of dream-sleep, and the heavy slumber
which exhaustion finally gave her--all this had brought downstairs, to
be kissed, embraced and forgiven, a Lucy disillusioned and tired to
death, but schooled to patience. Her conclusion of the whole matter
now was that it was James who had indeed loved her in the dark, with
an access of passion which he had never shown before and could drop
apparently as fitfully as he won to it, and also with a fulness of
satisfact