She sprang up from her rock and faced about; but Lenox, smilingly, determined, stood astride across the narrow path. ‘Excuse me, Miss O’Neill, not if I can prevent it,’ he said. ‘Forsyth’s going to have his chance fair and square. Of course if you’re game for a free fight—well, come on!’ For a second she looked him up and down, a sudden flicker of humour in her eyes. ‘I tackled a policeman once. A bigger fellow than you. And he was very glad to get rid of me.’ ‘I can well believe it,’ Maurice answered with becoming gravity. ‘But look here, just consider, what earthly good would you do by deferring the inevitable—say, twenty-four hours—and probably annoying Miss Alison into the bargain?’ The last shot told. Harry let out her breath in a great sigh. ‘Life’s a bewildering business,’ she mused aloud. But common sense told her he spoke truth; and she liked him none the less for backing up his friend. ‘Very well, Mr. Lenox, I give it up. You evidently have instructions from head-quarters, and I’ll stay here till you give the word. But scenery bores me stiff; so please make yourself as interesting as you know how.’ ‘Right you are,’ said Maurice; and indicating her deserted rock he flung himself on the heather at her feet in such a position that her prosaic figure in its knitted coat and rough skirt should not intrude upon his vision of the landscape. Then he proceeded, in his fluent fashion, to enlarge on the subject uppermost in his mind—Sir Mark’s queer conviction that a wide-spread revival of handicrafts and guilds would go far to solve the strike problem by restoring the creative sense in labour and renewing the broken link between art and life⸺ For Sir Mark himself, at that moment, life held only one purpose, one achievement worthy of serious consideration—the linking of his own destiny with that of the girl who seemed capable of maintaining indefinitely her graceful pose of contemplation. It was a pose that revealed to admirable advantage the long lines of her figure and the beauty of her small head with its close-fitting coils of hair. Her discarded hat lay on the heather at her feet. Close to her chosen rock sprang a young birch, its supple grace a reflection of her own; its drooping plumes, stirred by the breeze, dappling her blue dress with tiny restless shadows.