But their speech betrayed them not. Roseate stage of the passion when unacknowledged lovers are conscious each of the other’s secret, yet talk upon commonplace subjects, look celibacy, stoutly, in the face, still. If that hour only lasted! If the clover would not lose its first honeyed sweetness, if the gold would stop on the wheat-fields, if the thrushes would sing love-ditties till September, instead of becoming respectable heads of families in June! ‘You put forth to sea as a martyr, so I will not ask if you have enjoyed yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot. I have. Without giving up a prejudice against military folk in general,’ said Marjorie Bartrand, ‘I pronounce the subalterns’ picnic to have been a success.’ ‘Success--looked at from whose focus, Miss Bartrand? Poor Jack, with his twisted ankle, scarcely appreciated the cleverness with which we managed to kill a day and night of our existence, depend upon it.’ ‘Nor did Mrs. Verschoyle. “If we had only been drinking tea,” so I heard her make moan through the fog--“drinking tea as we used on L’Ancresse Common, when the Colonel was in command!”’ ‘Miss Tighe, at least, enjoyed herself. Other conquests may have been made,’ observed Geoffrey, a little inappositely. ‘Miss Tighe captured a new butterfly! A human being with a hobby possesses a joy that all the sorrows and passions of our common nature cannot rob him of.’ But neither Mrs. Verschoyle nor Cassandra served to open out wider interests. The conversation flagged sensibly, and Marjorie’s pace quickened. For the first time since she began to read with Geff, Marjorie felt that she was at a loss for subjects in talking to her tutor. ‘I am afraid your cousin, Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, did not take much pleasure out of the day.’ She made the remark after some deliberation, and without looking round at Geoffrey’s face. ‘It was a mistake for Dinah to go,’ Geoffrey answered, keeping his gaze very straight before him. ‘Dinah’s life is a dull one. The kind of Bohemian wandering existence which suits Gaston as an artist robs his wife of the household tasks in which she could take honest heart. If I were not so mortally afraid of you, Miss Bartrand----’ ‘_Of me?_’ ‘I should use a French phrase.’ ‘Please do! I delight in your command of modern languages.’ ‘I should call Dinah desœuvrée.’ Geff, you may be sure, pronounced the word atrociously. ‘But she will never find compensation by frequenting Gaston’s world. At this moment poor Dinah, I know, feels heavier in spirit than if she had stayed quietly at home with her book and her cross-stitch. ‘She is beautiful beyond praise. In these regions one gets tired of mere pink and white prettiness. It is a thing of the climate. Every girl in the Channel Islands has her day of good looks. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s is a face of which you could never grow tired.’