"Are you, really? That's a charming confession to hear from one's wife. You look different to-night, Ladybird. What's come to you?" "I don't know," she murmured truthfully; adding so low that he could barely catch the words, "Only--I don't seem ever to have understood--till just now how much--I really care----" "Why,--_Evelyn_!" Sheer surprise checked further speech, and with a man's instinctive sense of reserve he looked hastily round to make sure that they were alone. She misread his silence, and slipped a hand under his arm. "You're not angry, are you--that I--didn't understand sooner?" "Good heavens, no!" "Then come--please come. Honor gave me the whole dance. Besides--look!--there she goes with Major Wyndham. She's always happy with him!" Desmond smiled. "That's true enough. No need for us if Paul is in the field. Come this way, Ladybird. I know the Lawrence Hall of old." They sought and found a sofa in a retired, shadowy corner. "That's ever so nice," she said simply. "Sit down there." He obeyed, and there was a momentary silence between them. Then the emotion astir within her swept all before it. Turning suddenly, she flung both arms round his neck and hid her face upon his shoulder, her breath coming in short, dry sobs, like the breath of an overwrought child. Very tenderly, as one who touches that which he fears to bruise or break, he drew her close to him, his own pulses quickened by a remembrance of the words that gave the clue to her strange behaviour, and during those few minutes between dance and dance, Evelyn Desmond arrived at a truer knowledge of the man she had married, in the girlish ignorance of mere fascination, than two years of life with him had brought to her half-awakened heart. BOOK II. "In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men." --SHAKESPEARE. CHAPTER XVII. YOU WANT TO GO! "White hands cling to the tightened rein, Slipping the spur from the booted heel, Tenderest voices cry 'Turn again!' Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel. High hopes faint on a warm hearth-stone; He travels the fastest who travels alone." --KIPLING. For the first six weeks of the new year life flowed serenely enough in the bungalow on the mound. Relieved of the greater part of her burden, and re-established in her husband's heart, Evelyn Desmond blossomed like a flower under the quickening influences of spring. Light natures develop best in sunshine: and so long as life asked no hard things of her, Evelyn could be admirably sweet-tempered and self-forgetful--even to the extent of curbing her weakness for superfluous hats and gloves and shoes. A genuine sacrifice, this last, if not on a very high plane. But the limits of such natures are set, and their feats of virtue or vice must be judged accordingly.