other of a god. To shock the one or gibe at the
other were a blasphemy he simply couldn't contemplate. What then was
to be the end of it? He didn't know; he didn't care. She loved him,
he believed; she had kissed him, therefore she must love him. Such
women don't give their lips without their hearts. But then she had
been scared, and had cried off? Well, that, too, he seemed to
understand. That was where her sense of law came in. He could not but
remember that it would have come in before, had she known who her
lover was. As things fell out, she slipped into love without knowing
it. The moment she had known it, she withdrew to the shadow of her
hearth. That was his Lucy all over. _His_ Lucy? Yes, for that wasn't
the Solicitor's Lucy--if, indeed, the solicitor had a Lucy. But had
he? A little weakness of Urquhart's was to pride himself on being a
man of whims, and to suppose such twists of the mind his unique
possession. All indeed that he had of unique was this, that he
invariably yielded to his whims; whereas other people did not.

However, he set a watch upon himself on this night of witchery, and
succeeded perfectly. They talked leisurely and quietly--of anything or
nothing; the desultory, fragmentary interjections of comment which
pass easily between intimates. Lucy's share was replete with soft
wonderings at the beauty of the world. Neither of them answered the
other.

Under the birch-trees it was light, but very damp. He wouldn't allow
her to stop there, but bade her higher up the hillside. There were
pines there which were always dry. "Wait you there," he said; "I'm
going back to get you a wrap." She would have stopped him, but he had
gone.

Urquhart, walking up sharply to the house, was not at all prepared for
Macartney walking as sharply down from it. In fact, he was very much
put out, and the more so because from the first James took the upper
hand.

"Hulloa," said the lord of the eyeglass.

"Hulloa, yourself," said Urquhart, and stopped, which he need not have
done, seeing that Macartney with complete nonchalance continued his
walk.

"Seen my wife anywhere?" came from over his shoulder. Urquhart turned
on his heels. "Yes," he said, and walked on.

There was an end of one, two and three--as the rhyme goes. Urquhart
was hot with rage. That bland, blundering fool, that glasshouse, that
damned supercilious ass: all this and more he cried upon James. He
scorned him for his jealousy; he cursed him for it;