her life stilled her
heart and her breathing together.

After a moment she straightened up and walked forward, turned across the
lawn and into the syringa-bordered drive.

There was nobody in the terrace except Bunbury Gray in a brilliant
waistcoat, who sat smoking a very large faience pipe and reading a
sporting magazine. He got up with alacrity when he saw her, fetched her
a big wicker chair, evidently inclined to let her divert him.

"Oh, I'm not going to," she observed, sinking into the cushions. For a
moment she felt rather limp, then a quiver passed through her,
tightening the relaxed nerves.

"Bunbury," she said, "do you know any men who ever get tired of idleness
and clothes and their neighbours' wives?"

"Sure," he said, surprised, "I get tired of those things all right. I've
got enough of this tailor, for example," looking at his trousers. "I'm
tired of idleness, too. Shall we do something and forget the cut of my
clothes?"

"What do you do when you tire of people and things?"

"Change partners or go away. That's easy."

"You can't change yourself--or go away from yourself."

"But I don't get tired of myself," he explained in astonishment. She
regarded him curiously from the depths of her wicker chair.

"Bunbury, do you remember when we were engaged?"

He grinned. "Rather. I wouldn't mind being it again."

"Engaged?"

"Sure thing. Will you take me on again, Geraldine?"

"I thought you cared for Sylvia Quest."

"I do, but I can stop it."

She still regarded him with brown-eyed curiosity.

"Didn't you really tire of our engagement?"

"You did. You said that my tailor is the vital part of me."

She laughed. "Well, you _are_ only a carefully groomed combination of
New York good form and good nature, aren't you?"

"I don't know. That's rather rough, isn't it? Or do you really mean it
that way?"

"No, Bunny dear. I only mean that you're like the others. All the men I
know are about the same sort. You all wear too many ties and waistcoats;
you are, and say, and do too many kinds of fashionable things. You play
too much tennis, drink too many pegs, gamble too much, ride and drive
too much. You all have too much and too many--if you understand that!
You ask too much and you give too little; you say too much which means
too little. Is there none among you who knows something that amounts to
something, and how to say it and do it?"

"What the deuce are you driving at, Geraldine?" he asked, be