“Where have you been all these years? Surely not in Fairy Sky, without a line of intelligence to any one?” “Oh no; mostly I’ve been travelling.” “Twenty-five years travelling on Lucifram! Good Lord! the ‘Flying Dutchman’ isn’t in it.” This from St Armand, still sitting on the roots, by now engaged in smoking, eyeing the new-comer quizzically. Here Mr Barringcourt turned to him, laughing--a genuine laugh, so it seemed to Marigold, though, as their eyes met, a blaze of light as of swords crossing in a lightning storm leapt out from each. “Small planet, isn’t it, to need so much globe-trotting?” said he. “Alphonso here gives us to understand you went off on a honeymoon. Perhaps, in defying the fashionable short rations, you’ve managed to defy time too.” The Master came up and stood close beside him, laughing down at him--much more at home with him, so Marigold perceived, than ever he had been with the Sacred Priest. Yet, was it friendship, or only the familiarity of equality, that brought them thus so easily together? “Has he spread that report? I suppose, if one runs away with a girl on Lucifram, the only honourable course left open is to marry her”; and here, not by accident, yet very naturally, his laughing eyes fell upon Marigold, and a wave of shame--the first she had experienced in her short and happy life--followed the other two. Why should he lay such stress on “honourable,” and then on “marry”; or, if he must do, how dare he laugh the while in that contemptuous way, as if--as if----? She closed her mind with a snap, not knowing for the moment whom she hated most--he, or the High Priest, or--or herself--and wished she were away from this laughing group--away back with Alice. “That’s the High Priest’s solution,” said St Armand, “for your difficulty, at any rate.” “A very honourable solution, anyway. Don’t you agree with me, Miss Rags?” and again he turned to her, no more troubling to be serious than before. But Marigold was in a strange, unaccountable mood that morning, and the feeling of nervousness and anger now bubbling up in her had taken every vestige of colour from her face. “I--I think,” she said, her teeth half-closed, her voice trembling, “if you loved your wife, you would talk less about it--her.” “On the contrary,” replied he, suddenly serious, yet not seriously so, “I’ve never mentioned a wife. It is a mistake shared by no one but you and his holiness the High Priest; but women and clergymen invariably err--if they _do_ err--on the side of morality, not common-sense.” “And quack doctors,” said she, not knowing nor caring what she said, “err on the side of brutality.” Here St Armand laughed: “Quack doctors? Who is the quack?”