"No," said Hubert, reflecting that Jane Wood had gone before he paid his
visit.

Perhaps Cynthia did not understand this point. At any rate, she looked
relieved.

"I was glad when my time came to leave," she said more freely.

"Did you not like the place?"

"Pretty well. It was frightfully, awfully dull!"

"And yet you had never known anything more exciting? Were you really
conscious at the time that it was dull, or did you realise its dulness
only afterwards?"

"Oh, I must have had it in my blood to know the difference between
dulness and enjoyment," she said lightly; "otherwise----"

"Well--otherwise?"

"Otherwise," she said smiling at him, "how should I know it now? There
is a vast difference between dulness and enjoyment--as vast as that
between happiness and misery; and I know them both."

"Cynthia," he said, rising and leaning towards her--"Cynthia, child, you
do enjoy your present life--you are happy, are you not?"

She looked at him silently. The smile faded; he noticed that her bosom
rose and fell more quickly than before.

"You think I ought to be?" she said. "But why? Because I have been in
Italy--because I have had a little success or two--because people say
that I am handsome and that I have a voice? That is not my idea of
happiness, Mr. Lepel, if it is yours; but you know as well as I do that
it is not happiness at all. It is excitement if you like, but nothing
else--not even enjoyment."

"What would you call enjoyment then, Cynthia? What is your idea of
happiness?" Her hurried breathing seemed to have infected him with like
shortness of respiration; there was a fire in his eyes.

"Oh," she said looking away from him and holding her hands tightly
clasped upon her knee, "it is not different from other women's ideas of
happiness--it is quite commonplace! It means a safe happy home of my
own, with no reasonable fear that distrust or poverty or sin should
invade it--congenial work--a companion that I could love and trust and
work for and care for----" she stopped short.

"A husband," said Hubert slowly, "and children to kiss your lips and
call you 'Mother,' and a man's love to soften and sweeten all the days
of your life." She nodded, but did not speak. "And I," he said, with an
irrepressible sigh--"I want a woman's love--I want a home too, and all
the sweet charities of home about me. Yes, that is happiness."

"It will be yours by-and-by, I suppose," said Cynthia, in a rather
choked voi