for a few minutes. Then he had a good scratch
on both sides of his neck, after which he yawned. He did not actually
say "Pooh," but he looked it, and they both laughed.

"Dear man," she whispered, "wouldn't it be just too wonderful if it
could always be just you and me and Binks? . . ."

"And why shouldn't it be, lady?" he answered, and his arm went round
her waist. "Why shouldn't it be? We'll just sometimes have to see
some horrible outsider, I suppose, and perhaps you or somebody will
have to order food every year or so. . . . But except for that--why,
we'll just slip down the stream all on our own, and there won't be a
little bit of difficulty about keeping your eyes in the boat, grey
girl. . . ."

She smiled--a quick, fleeting smile; and then she sighed.

"Life's hell, Derek--just hell, sometimes. And the little bits of
Heaven make the hell worse."

"Life's pretty much what we make it ourselves, dear," said Vane gravely.

"It isn't," she cried fiercely. "We're what life makes us. . . ."

Vane bent over and started pulling one of Binks's ears.

"You hear that, old man," he said. "The lady is a base materialist,
while I--your funny old master--am sprouting wings and growing a halo
as a visionary." Vane looked sideways at the girl. "He manages to
make his own life, Joan. He'd be as happy with me in a garret as he
would in a palace. . . . Probably happier, because he'd mean more to
me--fill a bigger part of my life."

Suddenly he stood up and shook both his fists in the air. "Damn it,"
he cried, "and why can't we cheat 'em, Joan? Cheat all those grinning
imps, and seize the Blue Bird and never let it go?"

"Because," she answered slowly, "if you handle the Blue Bird roughly or
snatch at it and put it in a cage, it just pines away and dies. And
then the imps grin and chuckle worse than ever. . . ."

She rose and put her hands on his shoulders. "It's here now, my dear.
I can hear it fluttering so gently near the window. . . . And that
noise from the streets is really the fairy chorus. . . ."

A motor car honked discordantly and Vane grinned.

"That's a stout-hearted little fellow with a good pair of lungs on
him." She smiled back at him, and then she pushed him gently backwards
and forwards with her hands.

"Of course he's got good lungs," she said. "He toots like that
whenever anybody falls in love, and twice when they get married, and
three times when. . . ."

Vane's breath came in a