urkish bath.... Somehow I feel,--I can't quite say why,--that
this comedy of youth in which the elements of tragedy have been dragged
in by Gilbert, is coming to a head, and unless things run off at a
sudden tangent I don't see how the curtain can fall on a happy ending
for Joan and the husband who never shows himself and the gentle Alice.
Spring has its storms and youth its penalties. I'm beginning to believe
that safety is only to be found in the dull harbor of middle-age, curse
it, and only then with a good stout anchor."

It was at the exact moment that Joan and Harry went together up the
incline towards Martin's cottage at Devon, eyed by Tootles through the
screen door, that Gilbert came back to the veranda and drew up short at
the sight of his wife.

XIV

It was when Gilbert, after a most affectionate greeting and ten minutes
of easy small talk, led her away from the disappointed group, that
Alice made her first mistake.

"You don't look at all well, Gilbert," she said anxiously.

The very fact that he knew himself to be not at all well made him hate
to be told so. An irritable line ran across his forehead. "Oh, yes, I'm
well," he said, "never better. Come along to the summer house and let's
put a dune between us and those vultures."

He led her down a flight of stone steps and over a stretch of
undulating dry sand to the place where Hosack invariably read the
morning paper and to which his servants led their village beaux when
the moon was up, there to give far too faithful imitations of the
hyena. And there he sat her down and stood in front of her,
enigmatically, wondering how much she knew. "If it comes to that," he
said, "you look far from well yourself, Alice."

And she turned her pretty, prim face up to him with a sudden trembling
of the lips. "What do you expect," she asked, quite simply, "when I've
only had one short letter from you all the time I've been away."

"I never write letters," he said. "You know that. How's your mother?"

"But I wrote every day, and if you read them you'd know."

He shifted one shoulder. These gentle creatures could be horribly
disconcerting and direct. As a matter of fact he had failed to open
more than two of the collection. They were too full of the vibration of
a love that had never stirred him. "Yes, I'm glad she's better. I'm
afraid you've been rather bored. Illness is always boring."

"I can only have one mother," said Alice.

Palgrave felt the need