"Are you made of air, I wonder? I should be ashamed of you, Jeanie, if you belonged to me." Jeanie looked up into the handsome, olive face with eyes that smiled love upon him. "I expect it's partly because you are so big and strong," she said. "No, it isn't," said Piers. "It's because you're so small and weak. Avery will have to take you away to the sea again, what? You'd like that." "And you too!" said Jeanie. "I? Oh no, you wouldn't want me. Would you, Avery?" He deliberately addressed her for the first time that day. Over the child's head his eyes flashed their mocking message. She felt as if he had struck her across the face. "Would you?" he repeated, with arrogant insistence. She tried to turn the question aside. "Well, as we are not going--" "But you are going," he said. "You and Jeanie. How soon can you start? To-morrow?" Avery looked at him in astonishment. "Are you in earnest?" "Of course I'm in earnest," he said, with a frown that was oddly boyish. "You had better go to Stanbury Cliffs. It suited you all right in the spring. Fix it up with Mrs. Lorimer first thing in the morning, and go down in the afternoon!" He spoke impatiently. Opposition or delay always set him chafing. Jeanie looked at him with wonder in her eyes. "But you, Piers!" she said. "What will you do?" "I? Oh, I shall be busy," he said. "I've got a lot on hand just now. Besides," again the gibing note was in his voice, "you'll get along much better without me. Avery says so." "She didn't!" exclaimed Jeanie, with a sudden rare touch of indignation. "All right. She didn't," laughed Piers. "My mistake!" He flicked the child's cheek teasingly, and then abruptly stooped and kissed it. "Don't be angry, Queen of the fairies! It isn't worth it." She slipped her arm round his neck on the instant. "I'm not, dear Piers. I'm not angry. But we shouldn't want to go away and leave you alone. We shouldn't really." He laughed again, carelessly, without effort. "No, but you'd get on all right without me. You and Avery are such pals. What do you say to it, Avery? Isn't it a good idea?" "I think perhaps it is," she said slowly, her voice very low. He straightened himself, and looked at her, and again that vivid, painful blush covered her face and neck as though a flame had scorched her. She did not meet his eyes. "Very well then. It's settled," he said jauntily. "Now let's go and have some dinner!" He kept up his light attitude throughout the meal, save that once he raised his wine-glass mockingly to the woman on the wall. But his mood was elusive. Avery felt it. It was as if he played a juggling game on the edge of the pit of destruction, and she watched him with a leaden heart. She rose from the table earlier than usual, for the atmosphere of the dining-room oppressed her almost unbearably. It was a night of heavy stillness. "You ought to go to bed, dear," she said to Jeanie.