that," she said. "I could give you a much better reason."

James and his eyeglass both smiled. "Your exquisite reason?"

"He is like a child," said Lucy, "because he doesn't know that
anybody is looking at him, and wouldn't care if anybody was."

James clasped his shin. "Not bad," he said, "not at all bad. But the
test of that is the length to which you can carry it. Would he wear a
pot hat with a frock-coat?--that's the crux."

It really was, to James, as she knew very well. She perused the
glowing fire with its blue salt flames. Perhaps to most men. Probably
also to Mr. Urquhart. But she felt that she would be lowering a
generous ideal if she probed any further: so James was left to his
triumph.

* * * * *

The fatal week wore on apace; one of the few remaining days was wholly
occupied with preparations for the last. A final jaunt together was
charged with a poignancy of unavailing regrets which made it a harder
trial than the supreme moment. Never, never, had she thought this
bright and intense living thing which she had made, so beautiful and
so dear. Nor did it make a straw's worth of difference to the passion
with which she was burdened that she felt precisely the same thing
every time he left her. As for Lancelot, he took her obvious trouble
like the gentleman he was. He regretted it, made no attempt to
conceal that, but was full of little comfortable suggestions which
made her want to cry. "You'll have no more sapping upstairs directly
after dinner, I suppose!" was one of them; another was, "No more
draughty adventures by the Round Pond." Lucy thought that she would
have stood like Jane Shore by the Round Pond, in a blizzard, for
another week of him. But she adored him for his intention, and was
also braced by it. Her sister Mabel, who had three boys, did not
conceal her satisfaction at the approaching release--but Mabel spent
Christmas at Peltry; and the hunting was a serious matter.

The worst of her troubles was over when they were at Victoria.
Lancelot immediately became one of a herd. And so did she: one of a
herd of hens at the pond's edge. Business was business. Lancelot
remained kind to her, but he was inflexible. This was no place for
tears. He even deprecated the last hug, the lingering of the last
kiss. He leaned nonchalantly at the window, he kept his eye on her;
she dared not have a tear. The train moved; he lifted one hand. "So
long," he said, and turned to h