They exchanged no greeting but a smile, and as he stood on the slope above her, looking at her, he was aware of a great sense of peace and rest, and on a sudden, her understanding leapt to meet his. "It is done--you have finished it?" she cried, and her hands went out to him. "Yes," he said, quietly, freeing himself from the strange inward pressure by the touch of that outward union. "This piece of work is done, Patricia. The thing is there--my Road stuff. It's all right. It will stand whatever it is asked to stand. It is ready to use if anyone will use it." "Oh, I'm glad--so glad!" she cried. "Christopher, it is just the best thing in the world to know you have succeeded." Her complete sympathy and generous joy seemed to open his mind to the outward expression of the speaker, which of late, since the breaking of her engagement with Geoffry, he had tried hard not to observe. It seemed to him her face had lost a little of its childish roundness, that there was something accentuated about her that was nameless and yet expected. Also for the first time in his life he was conscious that her presence by his side was helpful. He had been unaware till she came that he needed any aid in what, to him, was a great moment in his life, but he knew it was restful and good to walk by her, a strange relief to tell her how the last difficulties that had arisen on the heels of each other had finally been met: how strong had been his temptation to give his discovery to the world before the tedious tests had gone to the uttermost limits experimental trials could reach. "It's so simple really," he said, "just a question of proportions once the material is there. I felt anyone might hit on it any day, and yet it would have been such a sickening thing to have someone else planting an improvement on the top of it within a few months. It may need it now, but at least it would mean the test of years, and not immediate improvement. Do you happen to know if Caesar had a good night or not?" "You've got to have some breakfast yourself first. I don't believe you remember you never came in to dinner last night at all." "Didn't I? Breakfast must wait till I've seen Caesar anyhow. He must know before anyone else, and you'll never be able to hold your tongue through breakfast, you know." "But I'm first, after all." She tilted her chin a little with a complacent nod at him. He stopped with a puzzled expression. "So you are. It never struck me--but--but," he hesitated, unable to read his own hazy idea, and concluded, "but, you are only a girl, so it doesn't matter." The look in his eyes atoned for the "only," and she bore no resentment, for she had met his look and read there the thought he could not decipher, and it sunk deep into her heart, with illuminating power. At the garden door, where the paths branched, she stood aside. "Go and tell Aymer and get your breakfast." "You are not going to stay out in this rain?"