g from the pines their delicious odour.
Below her stretched a valley of rich meadowland, of yellow cornfields,
and beyond moorland hillside glorious with purple heather and golden
gorse. She tried to compose her thoughts, to think of the last six
months, to steep herself in the calm beauty of the surroundings. And
she found herself able to do nothing of the sort. A new restlessness
seemed to have stolen in upon her. She started at the falling of a
leaf, at the lumbering of a cow through the hedge. Her heart was
beating with quite unaccustomed vigour, her hands were hot, she was
conscious of a warmth in her blood which the summer sunshine was
scarcely responsible for. She struggled against it quite uselessly.
She knew very well that a new thing was stirring in her. The period
of repression was over. It is foolish, she murmured to herself,
foolish. He will not come. He cannot.

And then all her restlessness was turned to joy. She sprang to her
feet and stood listening with parted lips and eager eyes. So he found
her when he came round the corner of the spinney.

"Anna," he cried eagerly.

She held out her arms to him and smiled.

* * * * *

"And where," he asked, "are my rivals?"

"Deserters," she answered, laughing. "It is you alone, Nigel, who have
saved me from being an old maid. Here are their letters."

He took them from her and read them. When he came to a certain
sentence in Brendon's letter he stopped short and looked up at her.

"So Brendon and I," he said, "have been troubled with the same fears.
I too, Anna, have watched and read of your success with--I must
confess it--some misgiving."

"Please tell me why?" she asked.

"Do you need me to tell you? You have tasted the luxury of power. You
have made your public, you are already a personage. And I want you for
myself--for my wife."

She took his hand and smiled upon him.

"Don't you understand, Nigel," she said softly, "that it was precisely
for this I have worked so hard. It is just the aim I have had in view
all the time. I wanted to have something to give up. I did not
care--no woman really cares--to play the beggar maid to your King
Cophetua."

"Then you will really give it all up!" he exclaimed.

She laughed.

"When we go indoors I will show you the offers I have refused," she
answered. "They have all been trying to turn my head. I think that
nearly every manager in London has made me an offer. My reply to