common-sense in recognising the folly of making a fruitless public exhibition of her private affairs; the other quarter no doubt wondered idly how long her blissful ignorance would continue, and saw material for drama the moment that enlightenment came. And in this wonder he could not help joining--what would she do if ever she found out? Her worldly wisdom would assuredly indicate a direction completely opposite to that in which her moral sense would point. That there would be a struggle he regarded as inevitable; but even he, knowing her as well as he did, could form no conjecture as to which way it would go. Marie accepting what had happened, and not quarrelling with the irremediable, made a picture unpaintable; but Marie, living the life of a woman who had separated herself from her husband, was almost equally outside possibilities. He had a vague sense of approaching storm and brewing mischief, remote it might be, but marching inevitably nearer, even as in some spell of sultry and oppressive days we know that it is only through thunder and a convulsion of elements that we can get back to cool and dewy mornings, and again regard sunshine as a friend, not as a thing to be shunned and shrunk from. It may have been that the vividness with which he was conscious in every fibre of threatening disaster was communicated by some subtle brain-wave to her; in any case, her first words as they walked down the shady path below the full-fledged elms bore very distinctly on that which filled his mind. "How hot it is!" she said. "There will surely be a storm." The echo made by her audible voice to his inaudible thought startled him. "What sort of storm?" he asked quickly, still busy on his own ground. She laughed. "So you have been thinking of storms, too," she said. "We often used to think in harness--do you remember, Jim? What sort of storm? Well, I too had other storms than thunder in my mind. You used to dislike real thunder-storms, I remember; but I always loved them. I expect other sorts of storms affect one similarly. I hate compromise, you know. If one is absolutely at cross-purposes with other people, it is much better to have it out fair and square, to upset the furniture and smash the china if necessary, rather than concede a little here and have a little conceded there. That always results in a state of things no better than before, and an added distaste on both sides to open the subject again." He did not at once answer; this bore directly on his stifled questionings, and answered them. "Was anything particular in your mind?" he asked at length.