she had fancied that it would be very restful to marry him.
The mood lasted for a week, and it was in this time that she had invited
him to the Abbey. Then a dream, of which she could remember few details,
had shattered the lazy romance which she was weaving; there was a shadow
which she knew would take form as Jack Waring, there was a hint of the
wild oath which she had taken when she was mad; and she had decided that
God was punishing her by opening her eyes to happiness and then throwing
a bar of shadow across her path as she struggled to reach it. Those were
the days when she heard that Jack was missing, the nights when she
prayed to hear that he was dead. Now that George was at hand, she did
not want him; she might find peace by marrying him, but she would find
nothing more. . . .

"Dear George! You think I'm perfect, don't you?"

"Perfection is meant to be more admired than loved."

"I've nothing but my imperfections to make people love me."

"That's a woman's way of marrying on her debts. . . . You're better,
Babs, than when I came to see you in London. I hope you're--happier."

"Ah, if only I could _undo_. . . ."

She broke off, and George looked at her cautiously to see whether she
was trying him with the pose of conscience-stricken penitent, already a
little out-moded after fourteen months of war.

"You certainly had your share of scrapes, but there was nothing
discreditable in them. Too much vitality----"

She spread out her hands, white and transparent in the sun-light.

"I'd _done_ everything else! Being with father everywhere. . . . And I
was driven into it by opposition. I must have been a mule in a previous
incarnation. D'you know, if father says he's coming here by the 4.10, I
_have_ to come by the 5.40, however inconvenient it may be to
everybody--just to assert myself?"

"But that wasn't the only reason," George suggested.

"What d'you mean?"

She had ceased to smile, and two faint lines of annoyance were visible
between her eye-brows.

"I'm sorry. It was no business of mine," said George apologetically.

"I don't mind _you_. But it was no business of the Deganway creature.
Can't you break his eye-glass or cut a piece off the end of his nose,
George? Did he tell you who I came down with?"

"Deganway is always thorough in his investigations. I'm sorry I
mentioned it; I was only teasing you."

"I don't mind _you_," she repeated. "But it does make things so
impossible if father and mot