"I see," said Olivia, seeing only too clearly. "Still, I'm not sure you were right: if I had been the girl----" "Yes?" The quick word altered the speech it had also interrupted. "I should have thought it exceedingly kind of you," said Olivia, after a moment's reflection. She replaced the flowers on the chimney-board, and then led the way out among the pines. "I'm sorry you were in such a hurry," he said, overtaking her when he had locked up the hut. "I might have made you some billy-tea. The billy's the can you make it in up the bush. I had such a work to get one over here! I keep some tea in the hut, and billy-tea's not like any other kind; I call it better; but you must come again and sample it for yourself." "We'll see," said Olivia smilingly; but with that she lost her tongue; and together they crossed the lake in mutually low spirits. It was as though the delicate spell of simple friendship had been snapped as soon as spun between them, and the friends were friends no more. On the lawn, however, in a hammock under an elm, they found a young man smoking. It was Mr. Edmund Stubbs, who had arrived, with his friend the Impressionist, on the Saturday afternoon. He was smoking a pipe; but the ground beneath him was defiled with the ends of many cigarettes; and close at hand a deck-chair stood empty. "I smell the blood of Mr. Llewellyn," said Olivia, coming up with the glooming Duke. "He smokes far too many cigarettes!" "He has gone for more," said the man in the hammock. "I wonder you don't interfere, Mr. Stubbs; it must be so bad for him." "On the contrary, Miss Sellwood, it is the best thing in the world for him. A man must smoke something. And an artist must smoke cigarettes. You can tell what he does smoke, however, from his work. Pipe-work is inevitably coarse, banal, obvious, and only fit to hang in the front parlours of Brixton and Upper Tooting. Cigar-work is little better; but that of the cigarette is delicate, suggestive, fantastic if you will, but always artistic. Ivor Llewellyn's is typical cigarette-work." "How very interesting," said Olivia. "My colonial!" muttered the Duke. At the same time they caught each other's eyes, turned away with one consent, nor made a sound between them until they were out of earshot of the hammock. And then they only laughed; yet the spell that had been broken was even thus made whole. CHAPTER IX AN ANONYMOUS LETTER