"You darling," she said in a low, happy voice. "You've made me happier than I ever dreamed of being. I don't know what to say to you; I simply don't know how to thank you for doing this wonderful thing for me." He, too, was happier than he had ever been in all his life; and so much in love that he found nothing to say for a moment save the few trite phrases in which a man in love says many commonplaces, all of which only mean, "I love you." [Illustration: "When he saw her he sprang out and came forward."] Doubtless she understood the complicated code, for she laughed and blushed a trifle and looked around at her maid laden with luggage. "Where can we put these, Clive?" she asked. "What on earth is all that luggage?" he asked, surprised. "I'm going to remain a few days," she explained, "so I've brought a few things." "But do you imagine there is anything to eat or anywhere to lay your head in that tumble down old house?" he demanded, secretly enchanted with her rash enthusiasm. "I propose to camp. I can buy milk, crackers, and sardines at Spring Pond village; also sufficient bathroom and bed linen. That is all I require to be perfectly comfortable." There was no rumble on the Stinger, only a baggage rack and boot. Here he secured, covered, and strapped Athalie's impedimenta; the maid slipped on her travelling coat; she sprang lightly into the seat; and Clive went around and climbed in beside her, taking the wheel. The journey downtown and across the Queensboro Bridge was the usual uncomfortable and exasperating progress familiar to all who pilot cars to Long Island. Brooklyn was negotiated prayerfully; they swung into the great turnpike, through the ugliest suburbs this humiliated world ever endured, on through the shabby, filthy, sordid environment of the gigantic Burrough, past ignoble villages, desolate wastes, networks of railway tracks where grade crossings menaced them, and on along the purlieus of suburban deserts until the flat green Long Island country spread away on either side dotted with woods and greenhouses and quaint farm-houses and old-time spires. "It is pretty when you get here," he said, "but it's like climbing over a mile of garbage to get out of one's front door. No European city would endure being isolated by such a desert of squalor and abominable desolation." But Athalie merely smiled. She had been far too excited to notice the familiar ugliness and filth of the dirty city's soiled and ragged outskirts. And now the car sped on amid the flat, endless acres of cultivated land, and already her dainty nose was sniffing familiar but half-forgotten odours--the faintest hint of ocean, the sun-warmed scent of freshly cut salt hay; perfumes from woodlands in heavy foliage, and the more homely smell from barn-yard and compost-heap; from the sunny, dusty village streets through which they rolled; from village lanes heavy with honeysuckle.