happy; but nobody else would touch it.
Lucy never played cards; Urquhart, having better things to do, said
that he never did. Margery Dacre and Lingen preferred retirement and
their own company. Lingen, indeed, was exhibiting his heart to the
pale-haired girl as if it was a specimen-piece. "I am really a very
simple person," he told her, "one of those who, trusting once, trust
for ever. I don't expect to be understood, I have no right to ask for
sympathy. That would be too much to look for in a jostling,
market-day world like ours. But I cherish one or two very fragrant
memories of kindnesses done. I open, at need, a drawer; and, like the
scent of dry rose-leaves, or lavender, a sweet hint steals out that
there are good women in the world, that life is not made up of
receipted bills. Don't you understand the value of such treasures? I
am sure that you do. You always seem to me so comprehending in your
outlook." Margery said that she hoped she was.

* * * * *

It was Lucy's business immediately after dinner to see that Lancelot
was decently abed. The lad took the last ounce out of himself before
that time came, and was to be brought by main force to the bath,
crimson to the roots of his hair and dripping with sweat. Protesting
to the uttermost, still panting with his final burst in the open, she
saw to it that he was quiet before she could be so herself. Then she
was free, and Urquhart found--or looked for--his chance. The woods
called her, the wondrous silver-calm of the northern night. She longed
to go; but now she dreaded Urquhart, and dared not trust herself. It
had come to this, that, possessed as she was, and happy in possession,
he and all that he stood for could blot the whole fair scene up in
cold fog. That was how she looked at it in the first blush of her new
life.

He didn't understand that; but he saw that she was nervous, and set
himself to reassure her. He assumed his dryest tone, his most
negligent manner. When she came downstairs from Lancelot, and after
watching the card-players, fingering a book or magazine, drifted to
the open window and stood or leaned there, absorbing the glory of the
night--Urquhart left her, and pulled at his pipe. When she spoke to
the room at large--"Oh, you stuffy people, will you never understand
that all the world is just out here?" he was the first to laugh at
her, though he would have walked her off into that world of magic and
dream, str