With the wonderful adaptability of women—a hereditary faculty, which depends upon the fact that from the beginning of time the sex has been continually employed in making the best of situations which were not of their own choosing—Maude carried off her new character easily and gracefully. In her trim blue serge dress and sailor hat, with the warm tint of yesterday’s sun upon her cheeks, she was the very picture of happy and healthy womanhood. Frank was also in a blue serge boating-suit, which was appropriate enough, for they spent most of their time upon the water, as a glance at his hands would tell. Their conversation was unhappily upon a very much lower plane than when we overheard them last. ‘I’ve got such an appetite!’ ‘So have I, Frank.’ ‘Capital. Have another cutlet.’ ‘Thank you, dear.’ ‘Potatoes?’ ‘Please.’ ‘I always thought that people on their honeymoon lived on love.’ ‘Yes, isn’t it dreadful, Frank? We must be so material.’ ‘Good old mother Nature! Cling on to her skirt and you never lose your way. One wants a healthy physical basis for a healthy spiritual emotion. Might I trouble you for the pickles?’ ‘Are you happy, Frank?’ ‘Absolutely and completely.’ ‘Quite, _quite_ sure?’ ‘I never was quite so sure of anything.’ ‘It makes me so happy to hear you say so.’ ‘And you?’ ‘O Frank, I am just floating upon golden clouds in a dream. But your poor hands! Oh, how they must pain you!’ ‘Not a bit.’ ‘It was that heavy oar.’ ‘I get no practice at rowing. There is no place to row in at Woking, unless one used the canal. But it was worth a blister or two. By Jove, wasn’t it splendid, coming back in the moonlight with that silver lane flickering on the water in front of us? We were so completely alone. We might have been up in the interstellar spaces, you and I, travelling from Sirius to Arcturus in one of those profound gulfs of the void which Hardy talks about. It was overpowering.’ ‘I can never forget it.’ ‘We’ll go again to-night.’ ‘But the blisters!’ ‘Hang the blisters! And we’ll take some bait with us and try to catch something.’ ‘What fun!’ ‘And we’ll drive to Rottingdean this afternoon, if you feel inclined. Have this last cutlet, dear!’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘Well, it seems a pity to waste it. Here goes! By the way, Maude, I must speak very severely to you. I can’t if you look at me like that. But really, joking apart, you must be more careful before the waiters.’ ‘Why, dear?’ ‘Well, we have carried it off splendidly so far. No one has found us out yet, and no one will if we are reasonably careful. The fat waiter is convinced that we are veterans. But last night at dinner you very nearly gave the thing away.’ ‘Did I, Frank?’