And because he was happy, she was happy too. And they had a successful morning, with three redstarts’ eggs in Justin’s moss-lined collecting-box, and two photographs, at the end of it, and a peaceful and protracted lunch. Justin gratified Laura, as a man always does gratify a woman when he enjoys his food. It was so lucky that she had boiled that third egg.... She had known that two would not be enough.... Afterwards Justin, lulled by the sun and the silence and the scent of wild thyme, and possibly by that third egg, went to sleep: and Laura sat and watched him and compared his serene repose with the lax, crimson, open-mouthed slumber of lesser men—Wilfred and James, and gentlemen in railway carriages, and even Gran’papa. You could hear Gran’papa quite clearly on still nights.... But Justin stood the test of sleep. Sleep did not betray Justin or betrayed only that there was nothing to betray. For Life had dealt him no blow as she passed too close, her mighty wings had as yet but fanned him from afar. There was no signature of care or joy or sin about eyes and mouth and forehead: the face had no history: was like a fine new building, needing the scars and mellowing of time to temper it to beauty. But Laura missed nothing. Laura, who never saw a fault in anything she loved, could not be expected to find faultlessness a flaw. If Laura thought at all, if the hot, scented quiet of the afternoon had not made her mind as drowsy as Justin’s body, her thoughts were not critical, only observant, as they strayed with her eyes in a voyage of discovery over the face that she was never tired of watching. It was so interesting to see Justin with his eyes shut.... It altered him ... and the smoothing of the faint habitual frown between his brows ... gave him—self-reliant, self-sufficing Justin—a child’s look, a defenceless look, that caused her a strange, maternal pang. It made her, she did not know why, put out her hand to him and touch the rough tweed of his coat: and so sit patiently, bent forward a little, watching over him. He woke at last, noiselessly, as he did everything, and surprised her intent look. “Hullo, Laura! What’s up?” Laura in emergency was always superb. There was not the adumbration of a pause between his question and her reply. “A mosquito! Keep still!” She clapped her hands together over an imaginary insect. “They’re beginning to bite. You’ve been asleep. Oh, look!” A rabbit, startled by the sudden noise, was scuttering into its hole, fatly, with a flicker of white tail. Laura laughed. “_The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh, my dear paws! Oh, my fur and whiskers!_ Did you ever see such a drunken lollop? He was tipsy with sunshine, Justin. You know, it’s most dissipated for a rabbit to be out at this hour. He ought to be in bed.” She stretched out lazy arms. “Oh—isn’t it hot? How you can stand the sun pouring down on you like that! Come into the shade, Justin—what there is of it, at least.”