She looked at him fondly. "Yes, more than yesterday "--then suddenly she laughed and laid her other hand on his. "I will say it, dear, since it pleases you. There are more roses to-day because you have come, and this is holiday-time." Their welcome was over; they had stepped for a time into each other's lives. A ridiculous pretence, of course; a mere attempt to make imagination play the part assigned since all eternity to facts. But if it pleased these two, or if it pleases any number of persons who find facts are stubborn things, why should the world quarrel with it? Belle had once on a time made herself unnecessarily miserable by imagining that she and Philip were in love with each other, and that, since love was inextricably bound up with marriage or the desire for it, she must be posing as the heroine of the third-rate French novel. Her consequent loss of self-respect had very nearly spoiled her life, and even Philip had never ventured to think what might have happened had John lived to force them into action. The unreality of her past fears had come home to Belle, however, during the long months when she had waited for her last legacy. And with the first sight of the baby-face whereon Fate had set its mark of failure all too clearly, had come a resolution that in the future nothing but her own beliefs should rule her conduct. Her life and Philip's should not be spoiled by other people's ideas; her imagination should be her slave, not her master. So much, and more, she had said to Philip on that mirky day when in his first disappointment he had declared that he could not bear it. But that had been five years ago, and life seemed more than bearable as he walked round the garden with her hand drawn through his arm and held there caressingly. A man who is in command of a regiment in which he has served since he was a boy, whose heart is in his profession, whose career has been successful, has other interests in life besides marriage; if he has not, the less he figures as a hero, even in a novel, the better. "It is like Nilgunj, isn't it?" said Belle pointing to the tangles of flowers. "With a difference. You can't grow Maréchal Niel roses in England. They were,--well,--overpowering as I came through. Mildred has the garden very nice; you would hardly recognise the place. The trees you planted are taller than the house; but everything grows fast in India,--their eldest girl is up to my elbow. Oh! and Maud was there on a visit, wearing out her old clothes. She hasn't forgiven you yet, Belle, for what she calls throwing away your money and becoming a hospital nurse. I spent some time in trying to explain that you were simply spending your money in the way which pleased you best; but it was no use. She only said that caps were no doubt very becoming. Why don't you wear them, Belle? You always tell _me_ to take what pleasure I can out of life, and I obey orders."