n her face that which gave him a view
into a strange new world. He had thought that women blushed when they
talked of love, but he eyes were as grave and candid as a boy's. Here
was one who had gone through waters so deep that she had lost the
foibles of sex. Love to her was only a word of ill omen, a threat on
the lips of brutes, an extra battalion of peril in an army of
perplexities. He felt like some homely rustic who finds himself swept
unwittingly into the moonlight hunt of Artemis and her maidens.

"He is a romantic," she said. "I have known so many like him."

"He's no that," said Dickson shortly. "Why he used to be aye laughing
at me for being romantic. He's one that's looking for truth and
reality, he says, and he's terrible down on the kind of poetry I like
myself."

She smiled. "They all talk so. But you, my friend Dickson" (she
pronounced the name in two staccato syllables ever so prettily), "you
are different. Tell me about yourself."

"I'm just what you see--a middle-aged retired grocer."

"Grocer?" she queried. "Ah, yes, epicier. But you are a very
remarkable epicier. Mr. Heritage I understand, but you and those
little boys--no. I am sure of one thing--you are not a romantic. You
are too humorous and--and--I think you are like Ulysses, for it would
not be easy to defeat you."

Her eyes were kind, nay affectionate, and Dickson experienced a
preposterous rapture in his soul, followed by a sinking, as he realized
how far the job was still from being completed.

"We must be getting on, Mem," he said hastily, and the two plunged
again into the heather.

The Ayr road was crossed, and the fir wood around the Mains became
visible, and presently the white gates of the entrance. A wind-blown
spire of smoke beyond the trees proclaimed that the house was not
untenanted. As they entered the drive the Scots firs were tossing in
the gale, which blew fiercely at this altitude, but, the dwelling
itself being more in the hollow, the daffodil clumps on the lawn were
but mildly fluttered.

The door was opened by a one-armed butler who bore all the marks of the
old regular soldier. Dickson produced a card and asked to see his
master on urgent business. Sir Archibald was at home, he was told, and
had just finished breakfast. The two were led into a large bare
chamber which had all the chill and mustiness of a bachelor's
drawing-room. The butler returned, and said Sir Archibald would see
him. "I'