'Of course I will,' replies Talbot; 'only,' with a laugh that does not ring quite naturally, 'you do not know what you are bringing upon yourself. Well, where am I to begin? At the very beginning?' 'At the very beginning,' repeats she, with a sigh of satisfaction, settling herself more comfortably with her back against the tree-trunk to listen. 'Tell me where you were born, and,' laughing, 'what sort of a baby you were.' And so he begins at the very beginning; and for a while goes on glibly enough. There are worse occupations for a summer's morning than to sit on juicy May grass, with the woman you love beside you; and to read in the variations of her rapt blue eyes her divine compassion for you. For the you, the innocent distant you of six, who had the whooping-cough so badly; her elate pride in the scarcely less distant you of sixteen, carrying home your school-prizes to your mother; her tearful sympathy with the nearer you--the you who still ache at the memory of the loss you sustained when full manhood had given you your utmost capacity for feeling it. Up to the date of his sister's death he goes on swimmingly; but with that date there coincides, or almost coincides, another. It was during the physical collapse that followed that crushing blow that Betty, with her basket of red roses, had first come tripping into his life. He stops abruptly. 'Well?' she says expectantly, looking towards him, and wiping the sympathetic tears from her soft eyes. 'Well!' he repeats, with an uneasy laugh. 'Have not I dosed you with myself enough for one morning? I--I think that is about all.' 'But that was more than five--nearly six years ago,' objects she. 'Nearly six years ago,' he echoes, in a tone of almost astonishment; 'so it was. But--but, as I need not tell you, the importance of time is not measured by its length; there are moments that bring an empire, and there are years that bring nothing, or less than nothing.' 'They cannot have brought _nothing_,' replies she, her luminous eyes, in whose pupils he can see himself mirrored in little, still interrogating his; 'they must have brought _something_, good or bad; they must have brought something.' 'You know that there has been no change of Ministry since then,' he goes on, speaking rather fast, and wincing under the steadiness of her look. 'I have been ----'s secretary ever since--a mere machine, a scribbling machine; and you know that machines have no history.'