--brought him up to her with his tail
wagging and his tongue out.

"Don't let's be silly," she said, "time's too short. Look, Jon, you can
just see where I've got to cross the river. There, round the bend, where
the woods begin."

Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the
trees--and felt his heart sink.

"I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next hedge, it
gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye."

They went side by side, hand in hand, silently toward the hedge, where
the may-flower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.

"My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters there
will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week."

Jon nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared straight
before him.

"To-day's the twenty-third of May," said Fleur; "on the ninth of July
I shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three o'clock; will
you?"

"I will."

"If you feel as bad as I it's all right. Let those people pass!"

A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in Sunday
fashion.

The last of them passed the wicket gate.

"Domesticity!" said Fleur, and blotted herself against the hawthorn
hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster
brushed her cheek. Jon put up his hand jealously to keep it off.

"Good-bye, Jon." For a second they stood with hands hard clasped. Then
their lips met for the third time, and when they parted Fleur broke away
and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood where she had left him, with
his forehead against that pink cluster. Gone! For an eternity--for seven
weeks all but two days! And here he was, wasting the last sight of
her! He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly on the heels of the
straggling children. She turned her head, he saw her hand make a little
flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the trailing family blotted her
out from his view.

The words of a comic song--

"Paddington groan-worst ever known
He gave a sepulchral Paddington groan--"

came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading station.
All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with "The Heart
of the Trail" open on his knee, knitting in his head a poem so full of
feeling that it would not rhyme.

XII.--CAPRICE

Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and wanted
all her wits about her when she got in. She