ould never suspect--she's not very sharp, is she?"

"No, no. She's only what you would call my hired girl."

"Well, then, it's Versailles[125-1] for us. Here, give me your
portfolio to carry. Let's go by the tram line[125-2]--it's cheaper for
two poor folks."

On the way out he proposed, with the same thrifty motive, that they buy
provisions in the town, before they began their sight-seeing in the
chateau, and eat a picnic lunch somewhere in the park.

"Oh, anything you please now!" she answered with reckless
light-heartedness. "I'm quite lost already."

"There's nothing disreputable about eating sandwiches on the grass," he
assured her; and indeed, when they spread their simple provision out
under the great pines back of the Trianon, she seemed to agree with
him, eating with a hearty appetite, laughing at all his jokes, and,
with a fresh color and sparkling eyes, telling him that she had never
enjoyed a meal more.

"Good for you! That's because you work too hard at your old history of
music."--By this time each knew all the details of the other's
research--"You ought to have somebody right at hand to make you take
vacations and have a good time once in a while. You're too
conscientious."

Then, because he was quite frank and unconscious himself, he went on
with a simplicity which the most accomplished actor could not have
counterfeited, "That's what I'm always telling Maggie--Miss Warner.
She's the girl I'm engaged to."

He did not at the time remark, but afterward, in another land, he was
to recall with startling vividness the quick flash of her clear eyes
upon him and the fluttering droop of her eyelids. She finished her
eclair quietly, remarking, "So you are engaged?"

"Very much so," answered Harrison, leaning his back against the
pine-tree and closing his eyes, more completely to savor the faint
fragrance of new life which rose about them in the warm spring air,
like unseen incense.

Miss Midland stood up, shaking the crumbs from her skirt, and began
fitting her gloves delicately upon her slim and very white hands. After
a pause, "But how would she like _this_?" she asked.

Without opening his eyes, Harrison murmured, "She'd like it fine. She's
a great girl for outdoors."

His companion glanced down at him sharply, but in his tranquil and
half-somnolent face there was no trace of evasiveness. "I don't mean
the park, the spring weather," she went on, with a persistence which
evidently cost her an ef