ers to catch the words,
"No, of course it doesn't." Her voice cleared suddenly. "But if you
didn't hate me, why did you go away?"

"I went away because I was ill."

"And are you any better?"

"Yes, I think I'm better. I think I'm nearly all right now. I might
say I'll undertake never to be ill again, at least, not if you'll
marry me."

At these words his genius turned and looked at him with eyes ominous
and aghast. He had a vision of another woman kneeling beside a hearth
as her hands tended a dying fire. And he hardly saw the woman at his
side as he drew her to him and kissed her again because of the pain at
his heart. And Flossie wondered why in that moment he did not look at
her.

He was looking now. And as he looked his genius hid his face.

"You knew that was what I wanted?"

She shook her head slowly. "What does that mean? That you didn't know?
Or that you won't? But you will, Flossie?"

As he drew her to him a second time the old terror woke in his heart;
but only for a moment. For this time Flossie kissed him of her own
accord, with a kiss, not passionate like his own, but sweet and
fugitive. It was like a reminder of the transience of the thing he
sought, a challenge rousing him to assert its immortality.

He put her from him, and stooped over his own outstretched arms and
clasped hands; staring stupidly at the floor. When he spoke again it
was hardly, incisively, as a man speaks the truth he hates. "Do you
know what this means? It means waiting."

"Waiting?"

"Yes. I'm not a bit well off, you know; I couldn't give you the sort
of home you ought to have just yet. I'd no business to say anything
about it; but somehow I thought you'd rather know. And of course I've
no business to ask you, but--will you wait?"

"Well--if we must, we must."

"And if it means working at that beastly Bank for another year, do you
think you can keep it up so long?"

"I'll try to."

She leaned towards him, and they sat there, holding each other's
hands, looking into each other's eyes, hearing nothing, feeling
nothing, but the beating of their own riotous hearts.

It was love as nature loves to have it. It was also what men call
honest love. But in the days when he had loved dishonestly, he had
never slipped from Poppy Grace's side with such a sense of misery and
solitude and shame.

CHAPTER XLVII

The game was over and Flossie had won. She had forced Fate's hand, or
rather, Mr Rickman's. Not by any coa