She looked at him for an instant--cropped hair, shoddy clothes, blunted nails, the evasive stamp of something new and perplexing on his handsome face: “Edred!” She was looking apprehensively down the long garden path which ran between the box edgings. Jethro might come in. Then she again turned her eyes with an effort toward the tall figure in the deplorable suit of ginger-colored tweed. In spite of herself, an expression of ecstasy broke across the cloud above her eyes. She half rose, put out her hand, peaked her head toward him. He gave a quick glance round; listened. Everything was still, but for the lambs and birds and insects; no sound of human life, no clink or clatter from the kitchen. He stepped up lithely to the chair, lifted her in his long arms, and kissed her--a long kiss which told volumes--full on the mouth. With that kiss, fully returned, each told the history of the weary months the prison had stolen. She let herself lie for a moment in his arms, caring for nothing in the world but that first re-union which she had so often imagined, so often longed for. Then she roused herself. “Why did you come?” she said reproachfully. “Oh, my darling, why did you come and spoil everything?” He shrugged. “We don’t know that anything is spoilt yet. I wouldn’t stand in your light for worlds. Tell me how you came here. Give me my cue.” “Come into the other room. We shall be quieter there.” He followed her through the low door into the room which the yew shadowed. They were no longer in the sun; something damp, melancholy, and threatening struck at them both. “Sit down,” she said, pointing nervously to a chair, taking one herself, and throwing a quick glance at the brass face of the tall clock. “I--I didn’t know you were out. I thought that it would be another six months----” He stuck out his long legs and sunk his hands in his pockets. He was tall and slim and elegant. At each gesture she was more than ever his slave--it brought back remembrance. Her eyes hardly left his face--dark, sallow, cruel. A sardonic-looking man, with silky black hair half veiling his scoffing mouth, and sleepy eyes which seemed always to be mocking. “Haven’t you ever heard,” he asked airily, “of a ticket-of-leave?” She shivered as she answered, well down in her dry throat, “I think so.” “Tell me how you came here, and what part I’m expected to play. I’m down on my luck at present, and you may be able to help me. Look at these clothes.” He touched the sacklike cloth. “Nothing but paper. The first shower would reduce me to pulp.” “I came here,” she said, “in answer to an advertisement. A man--the man who owns this house--wanted a wife.” “Whew! Such is the faithfulness of woman! But it was clever of you--confoundedly clever.”