his arm against the sun-warmed bricks of
the high wall as though to hold off some invader. "No, no; they'd never
dare to sell it."

"I'm glad you mind so much," said Daphne softly. "It's strange that
nobody minds but us, isn't it? I cried at first--and then I thought that
it would be happier if it wasn't lonely and empty, poor dear--and then,
it was such a beautiful day, that I forgot to be unhappy."

The man bestowed a wretched smile on her. "You hardly conveyed the
impression of unrelieved gloom as you came around that corner," he
assured her.

"I--I haven't a very good memory for being unhappy," Daphne confessed
remorsefully, a lovely and guilty rose staining her to her brow at the
memory of that exultant chant.

He threw back his head with a sudden shout of laughter.

"These are glad tidings! I'd rather find a pagan than a Puritan at Green
Gardens any day. Let's both have a poor memory. Do you mind if I smoke?"

"No," she replied, "but do you mind if I ask you what you are doing
here?"

"Not a bit." He lit the stubby brown pipe, curving his hand dexterously
to shelter it from the little breeze. He had the most beautiful hands
that she had ever seen, slim and brown and fine--they looked as though
they would be miraculously strong--and miraculously gentle. "I came to
see--I came to see whether there was 'honey still for tea,' Mistress
Dryad!"

"Honey--for tea?" she echoed wonderingly; "was that why you were looking
at the hive?"

He puffed meditatively, "Well--partly. It's a quotation from a poem.
Ever read Rupert Brooke?"

"Oh, yes, yes." Her voice tripped in its eagerness. "I know one by
heart--

"'If I should die think only this of me:
(That there's some corner of a foreign field
(That is forever England. There shall be--"

He cut in on the magical little voice roughly.

"Ah, what damned nonsense! Do you suppose he's happy, in his foreign
field, that golden lover? Why shouldn't even the dead be homesick? No,
no--he was sick for home in Germany when he wrote that poem of
mine--he's sicker for it in Heaven, I'll warrant." He pulled himself up
swiftly at the look of amazement in Daphne's eyes. "I've clean forgotten
my manners," he confessed ruefully. "No, don't get that flying look in
your eyes--I swear that I'll be good. It's a long time--it's a long time
since I've talked to any one who needed gentleness. If you knew what
need I had of it, you'd stay a little while, I think."

"Of co