"Maybe," she essayed quite abruptly, "Maybe it was a trifle funny of me not to tramp this afternoon. But the bridge-building work begins again next week, you know. It's pretty strenuous, everybody says. Men come home very tired from it. Not specially sociable. So I just made up my mind," she said, in a voice that though playfully lowered was yet rather curiously intense. "So I just made up my mind that I would stay at home this afternoon and get acquainted with my Husband." Half-proud, half-shamed, her puzzled eyes lifted to mine. "Because it's dawned on me very suddenly," she laughed, "that I don't know my Husband's opinion on one solitary subject in the world except--just me!" With a rather amusing little flush she stooped down and smothered her face in a pot of blue hyacinths. "Oh--hyacinths!" she murmured. "And May rain! The smell of them! Will I ever forget the fragrance of this week--while Time lasts?" But the eyes that lifted to mine again were still puzzled. "Now--that Mr. Keets," she faltered. "Why in just an hour or two this morning, why in just the little time that luncheon takes, I know his religion and his Mother's first name. I know his philosophies, and just why he adores Buskin and disagrees with Bernard Shaw. I know where he usually stays when he's in Amsterdam and just what hotel we both like best in Paris. Why I know even where he buys his boots, and why. And I buy mine at the same place and for just exactly the same reason. But my Husband." Quite in spite of herself a little laugh slipped from her lips. "Why--I don't even know how my Husband votes!" she gasped. In some magic, excitative flash of memory her breath began to quicken. "It--It was at college, you know, that we met--Paul and I," she explained. "At a dance the night before my graduation." Once again her face flamed like a rose. "Why, we were engaged, you know, within a week! And then Paul went to China!--Oh, of course, we wrote," she said, "and almost every day, too. But----" "But lovers, of course, don't write a great deal about buying boots," I acquiesced, "nor even so specially much about Buskin nor even their mothers." In the square of the library doorway a man's figure loomed a bit suddenly. "Vic! Aren't you ever coming?" fretted her impatient Bridegroom. Like a homing bird she turned and sped to her mate! Yet an hour later, when I passed the library door, I saw Paul Brenswick lying fast asleep in the depth of his big leather chair. Fire wasted--books neglected--Chance itself forgotten or ignored! But the Bride was nowhere to be seen. I was quite right though when I thought that I should find her in her room. Just as I expected, too, she was standing by the window staring somewhat blankly out at the Dunes.