“Something’s very badly wrong,” thought Muriel, and aloud she suggested the garden. The birds were making twilight magical on the velvet lawn. They sat breathing in the soft, rich air, heavy with the scent of summer flowers, too utterly at peace with Nature and the restful spell she can throw at moments over the most tortured hearts to do more than hush themselves into silence. Muriel was the first to speak. She remembered long afterwards how startling her voice sounded. “You have something to ask me?” “Ah!—no, no.” “Something to tell me?” “It’s hard—oh, Muriel, dearest—dearest, it’s hard!” cried Gladys. “Hard things are sometimes better shared,” said Muriel. “The hardest and the dearest sometimes can’t be,” Gladys sighed. “What can I do?” she added miserably. “It’s so old and stale, just the eternal wrong situations Nature pulls about so, or man gets twisted into! Mary, my cousin, you know, wants me—wants me to marry. I’m dependent on her, you see, since father failed in the States. They had me educated in England, and they ruined that for me—the steady setness that might have helped me now—by the wildest three years in America. Sixteen!—and their world without barriers, where everybody wants you to have a good time! No, I’m not crying—not for that. It lasted three years, and after the smash they sent me here. Mary doesn’t know what to do with me. I’m not her sort—I’m always getting into scrapes. I seem to have got into the nursery again, where there is nothing but corners. I’m in leading strings to a—maid. There’s only one way out of my nursery, Mary says—Muriel, it’s open now—but I almost think I’d rather throw myself out of the window than make use of it.” Muriel looked at her. “And is there no other door?” she asked gently. “Ah! not mine—somebody else’s, and—they’ve got the key.” “Where does it lead to?” Muriel asked. “I—I don’t know. The most beautiful place in the world, I fancy; but if it was a wilderness it would be the only way for me!” Timidly Gladys put out her hands, and Muriel held them, drawing the girl closer to her. She asked with wonderful mother-eyes the question no words could draw from her. “Yes,” she said at last, “people made a mistake when they thought the world was large. It’s very small—one woman’s heart can hold the whole of it.” “Muriel,” the other gasped, “Muriel, do you care for him?” “For Alec Bruce, dear child? No!” Suddenly her hands grew cold, a fear seized her, cutting her breath short and making the silence strangely empty. “You don’t mean him?” she asked very slowly as if she were just learning to talk. The girl shook her head. “You mean Jack Hurstly?” pursued Muriel gently inexorable. The girl caught her hands away and covered her face. “Oh, Muriel! Muriel!” she sobbed. “I don’t—I don’t care for him.” “Neither do I,” said Muriel very coldly. “Don’t you?—don’t you?” the girl exclaimed, her eyes shining like stars through a cloud. “Then, oh, dearest—my dearest, give me the key!”