so. The assertion that life isn't empty doesn't fill it."

"Ah, but NOW you will talk with me about all that," he broke in
triumphantly. "We've been standing off with one another. We've been
of no help to each other. But we'll change that, now. We'll talk over
everything together. We'll make up our minds exactly what we want to do,
and then I'll tuck you under my arm and we'll set out and do it."

She smiled with kindly tolerance for his new-born enthusiasm. "Don't
count on me for too much wisdom or invention," she warned him. "If
things are to be done, you are still the one who will have to do them.
But undoubtedly you are at your best when you are doing things. This
really has been no sort of life for you, here."

He gathered her arm into his. "Come and show me your greenhouses," he
said, and began walking toward the end of the terrace. "It'll turn
out to have been all right for me, this year that I've spent here," he
continued, as they strolled along. There was a delightful consciousness
of new intimacy conveyed by the very touch of her arm, which filled his
tone with buoyancy. "I've been learning all sorts of tricks here, and
getting myself into your ways of life. It's all been good training. In
every way I'm a better man than I was."

They had descended from the terrace to a garden path, and approached
now a long glass structure, through the panes of which masses of soft
colour--whites, yellows, pinks, mauves, and strange dull reds--were
dimly perceptible.

"The chrysanthemums are not up to much this year," Edith observed,
as they drew near to the door of this house. "Collins did them very
badly--as he did most other things. But next year it will be very
different. Gafferson is the best chrysanthemum man in England. That is
he in there now, I think."

Thorpe stopped short, and stared at her, the while the suggestions
stirred by the sound of this name slowly shaped themselves.

"Gafferson?" he asked her, with a blank countenance.

"My new head-gardener," she explained. "He was at Hadlow, and after poor
old Lady Plowden died--why, surely you remember him there. You spoke
about him--you'd known him somewhere--in the West Indies, wasn't it?"

He looked into vacancy with the aspect of one stupefied. "Did I?" he
mumbled automatically.

Then, with sudden decision, he swung round on the gravel. "I've got a
kind of headache coming on," he said. "If you don't mind, we won't go
inside among the flowers."

C