And the Furies were driving him from it! But here the Furies ceased from driving. Here he had delicious ease. Here a pair of ridiculously frail hands held him a lotus-fed prisoner. He smoked on. At last he resisted the spell. The whole thing was nonsensical. His pipe, only lightly packed by the frail hands, went out. He stuffed it in his pocket, and cleared his throat. He would say then and there what he had come to say. Stellamaris turned her head and laughed; and when Stellamaris laughed, the sea outside and the flowers in the delft bowl laughed, too. “The angel has been having a good time.” John cleared his throat again. “My dear,” said he, and then he stopped short. All the carefully prepared exordiums went out of his head. How now to break the news to her he did not know. “Are you very tired?” she asked. “Not a bit,” said John. “Then be a dear, and read me something. Read me 'Elaine.' ” The elevated and sophisticated and very highly educated may learn with surprise that “The Idylls of the King” still appeal to ingenuous fifteen. Thank God there are yet remaining also some sentimentalists of fifty who can read them with pleasure and profit! “But that is so sad, Stellamaris,” said John. “You don't want to be sad this beautiful spring morning.” Which was a very inconsistent remark to make, seeing that he was about to dash the young sun from her sky altogether. “I like being sad sometimes, especially when the world is bright. And Lancelot was such a dear,”--here spoke ingenuous fifteen,--“and Elaine--oh, do read it!” So John, secretly glad of a respite, drew from the bookcase which held her scrupulously selected and daintily bound library the volume of Tennyson and read aloud the idyll of Lancelot and Elaine. And the sea-wind blew about his head and fluttered the brown hair on the pillow, and the log-fire blazed in the chimney, and the great dog slept, and a noontide hush was over all things. And Risca read the simple poem with the heart of the girl of fifteen, and forgot everything else in the world. When he had finished, the foolish eyes of both were moist. “The dead oar'd by the dumb,” with the lily in her hand,--dead for the love of Lancelot,--affected them both profoundly. “I think I should die, too, like that, Great High; Belovedest,” said Stellamaris, “if any one I loved left me.” “But what Lancelot is going to leave you, dear?” said John. She shook the thistledown of sadness from her brow and laughed. “You and Walter are the only Lancelots I've got.” “The devil 's in the child to-day,” said Risca to himself. There was a short pause. Then Stella said: “Belovedest dear, what was the particular thing that Walter said you had to tell me?” “It 's of no consequence,” said John. “It will do to-morrow or the day after.” Stella started joyously,--as much as the rigid discipline of years would allow her,--and great gladness lit her face. “Darling! Are you going to stay here to-day and to-morrow and the next day?”