"Now," said Traill--everything was ready at his hand. "The making of coffee's the simplest thing in the whole world; that's why everybody finds it so deucedly difficult. We'll put this kettle on first." He thrust the kettle on the flame, pressing the coals down beneath it to give it surer hold. "I'm awfully glad you like my room," he said, looking up from his crouching attitude by the fire. "I should have been sorry if you hadn't." "Why?" "Oh, I don't know. If you hadn't liked my room, you wouldn't have liked me. My friend and his dog, I suppose." She tried to smile. "Well, I like it immensely. I think it's so awfully uncommon. I suppose you could never get a piano that would go with the rest of the things?" For the moment his expression hardened. A piano! He hated the sight of them. "No, never," he said. "P'raps you're not fond of music?" "No, not a bit. Are you?" "Oh yes; I love it." His eyes lost their steel again to the tone of her voice when she said that. "Well, that's as it ought to be," he remarked. "Religion and music are two things a woman can't do without. Are you very religious?" "I don't know exactly what you mean by that. I'm afraid I hardly ever go to church, and in that sense, I suppose, I'm not religious. But I always say my prayers every night and morning." Traill smiled at her gently. "That's all right," he said; "churches are nothing, only monuments that fulfil the double purpose of reminding the more forgetful of us that there are a class of people who believe in things they can't prove, and that also provide employment for those who have to look after them. I don't pray myself, but I should think it's the nearest thing you can get to in a combination of religion and common sense. Is that kettle boiling, do you think? Looks like it. Oh, of course, I ought to have known you were religious." "Why?" "Do you remember the way you took that impoverished joke of mine about the occupants of the kingdom of heaven?" She laughed lightly at the recollection. But it was the lightness only of a moment. Her head turned, and she found again the eyes of that miniature looking into hers. Questions then rushed to her lips--a chorus of children fretting with intense desire. She could not hold them back--they would speak. Each one held her heart in its hands. "Why do you have that miniature--amongst all the other pictures?" "That?" He turned round, following her eyes, the boiling kettle steaming in his hands. "Pretty, isn't it?" They both looked at it--he, without distraction--she, with eyes wandering covertly backwards and forwards to his face. Of course, she admitted its charm. Could she do otherwise?