n't matter for
you, Lucy. You won't have to stay on and hear him."

"I don't know. I think I shall stay on. You see, Mr. Rickman, I can't
part with this pretty room."

"Do you like it?"

"I like it very much indeed. You're all coming to dine with me here
again some day."

"And you must come and dine with us, Miss Harden, when we've got
settled." It was Flossie who spoke.

"I shall be delighted."

He looked up, surprised. He could not have believed the Beaver could
have done it so prettily. He had not even realized that it could be
done at all. It never occurred to him that his marriage could bring
him nearer to Lucia Harden. He looked kindly at the Beaver and blessed
her for that thought. And then a thought bolder than the Beaver's came
to him. "I hope," he said, "you'll do more than that. You must come
and stay with us in the summer. You shall sit out in a deck-chair in
the garden all day. That's the way to get strong."

Then he remembered that she could do that just as well in someone
else's garden up at Hampstead, and he looked shy and anxious as he
added, "Will you come?"

"Of course I'll come," said she.

He saw her going through the house at Ealing and sitting in the little
green garden with the lilac bushes about her all in flower. And at the
thought of her coming he was profoundly moved. His eyes moistened, and
under the table his knees shook violently with the agitation of his
nerves. Miss Roots gave one queer little glance at him and another at
Flossie, and the moment passed.

And Lucia had not divined it. No, not for a moment, not even in the
moment of leave-taking. She was still holding Flossie's hand in hers
when her eyes met his, kind eyes that were still saying almost
triumphantly, "I told you so."

As she dropped Flossie's hand for his, she answered the question that
he had not dared to ask. "I've read them," she said, and there was no
diminution in her glad look.

"When may I see you?"

"To-morrow, can you? Any time after four?"

CHAPTER LXI

He came into Lucia's presence with a sense of doing something
voluntary and yet inevitable, something sanctioned and foreappointed;
a sense of carrying on a thing already begun, of returning, through a
door that had never been shut, to the life wherein alone he knew
himself. And yet this life, measured by days and hours and counting
their times of meeting only, ran hardly to six weeks.

Since times and places were of no account, he mi