"And awe," she added. "Humphrey's career has all the fascination of a
runaway locomotive. One watches it transfixed, awaiting the inevitable
crash."

Their eyes met, and they both laughed.

"It's no use trying to be a humbug," said Victoria, "I can't. And I do
like Humphrey, in spite of his career."

And they laughed again. The music of the bells ran faster and faster
still, keeping time to a wilder music of the sunlit hills and sky; nor
was it strange that her voice, when she spoke, did not break the spell,
but laid upon him a deeper sense of magic.

"This brings back the fairy books," she said, "and all those wonderful
and never-to-be-forgotten sensations of the truant, doesn't it? You've
been a truant--haven't you?"

"Yes," he laughed, "I've been a truant, but I never quite realized the
possibilities of the part--until to-day."

She was silent a moment, and turned away her head, surveying the
landscape that fell away for miles beyond.

"When I was a child," she said, "I used to think that by opening a door I
could step into an enchanted realm like this. Only I could never find the
door. Perhaps," she added, gayly pursuing the conceit, "it was because
you had the key, and I didn't know you in those days." She gave him a
swift, searching look, smiling, whimsical yet startled,--so elusive that
the memory of it afterwards was wont to come and go like a flash of
light. "Who are you?" she asked.

His blood leaped, but he smiled in delighted understanding of her mood.
Sarah Austen had brought just such a magic touch to an excursion, and
even at that moment Austen found himself marvelling a little at the
strange resemblance between the two.

"I am a plain person whose ancestors came from a village called Camden
Street," he replied. "Camden Street is there, on a shelf of the hills,
and through the arch of its elms you can look off over the forests of the
lowlands until they end in the blue reaches of the ocean,--if you could
see far enough."

"If you could see far enough," said Victoria, unconsciously repeating his
words. "But that doesn't explain you," she exclaimed: "You are like
nobody I ever met, and you have a supernatural faculty of appearing
suddenly, from nowhere, and whisking me away like the lady in the fable,
out of myself and the world I live in. If I become so inordinately
grateful as to talk nonsense, you mustn't blame me. Try not to think of
the number of times I've seen you, or when it was we firs