s in their
varied liveries loved to congregate. July was not far advanced and the
sun had still some hours in which to shine. Ian and Milly went out and
walked in the Parks. The tennis-club lawns were almost deserted, but
they met a few acquaintances taking their constitutional, like
themselves, and an exchange of ordinary remarks with people who took her
normality for granted, helped Milly to believe in it herself. So long as
the blank in her memory continued, she could not be free from care; but
she went to sleep that night in Ian's arms, feeling herself protected by
them not only from bodily harm, but from all those dreadful fears and
evil fantasies that "do assault and hurt the soul."

CHAPTER XI

Ian had been so busy persuading Milly to view her own case as a simple
one, and so busy comforting her with an almost feminine intuition of
what would really afford her comfort, that it was only in the watches of
the night that certain disquieting recollections forced their way into
his mind. It was of course now part of his creed that he had loved Milly
Flaxman from the first--only he had never known her well till that
Christmas Vacation when they had skated so much together. Later on, such
disturbing events as engagement and marriage had seemed to him enough to
explain any changes he had observed in her. Later still, he had been too
much in love to think about her at all, in the true sense of the word.
She had been to him "all a wonder and a wild desire."

Now, taking the dates of her collapses of memory, he made, despite
himself, certain notes on those changes. It is to be feared he did not
often want to see Miss Timson; but on the day after Milly's return to
the world, he cycled out to visit her friend. Tims was spending the
summer on the wild and beautiful ridge which has since become a suburb
of Oxford. It was doubtful whether he would find her in, as she was
herself a mighty cyclist, making most of her journeys on the wheel,
happy in the belief that she was saving money at the expense of the
railway companies.

The time of flowers, the freshness of trees, and the glory of gorse and
broom was over. It was the season of full summer when the midlands,
clothed with their rich but sheenless mantle of green, wear a
self-satisfied air, as of dull people conscious of deserved prosperity.
But just as the sea or a mountain or an adventurous soul will always
lend an element of the surprising and romantic to the com