“I’m trying,” she had said, lying in that same chair a year previously, “I’m trying to find the real thing. I needn’t marry if I don’t want to; I haven’t got to marry for a home and a roof. And it’s got to be the right man. Of course I may make a mistake—a mistake which I shan’t find out till it’s too late. But surely when one has found it out before it’s too late, it’s better to acknowledge it at once. It’s no good making a second worse one by going through with it. I thought Arthur was all right”—Arthur was the member of Parliament—“I’m awfully fond of Arthur still. But I’m not the right wife for him. We jarred on one another in a hundred little ways. And he hasn’t got a sense of humour. I shall never forget the shock I got when I first realised that. He seemed to think that a sense of humour consisted of laughing at humorous things, of seeing a jest as well as anyone else. He didn’t seem to understand me when I told him that the real sense of humour is often closer to tears than laughter. Besides”—she had added inconsequently—“he had a dreadful trick of whistling down my neck when we danced. No woman can be expected to marry a permanent draught. And as for poor old Bill—well Bill’s an angel. I still adore Bill. He is, I think, the most supremely handsome being I’ve ever seen in my life—especially when he’s got his full dress on. But, my dear, I blame myself over Bill. I ought to have known it before I got engaged to him; as a matter of fact I did know it. Bill is, without exception, the biggest fool in London. I thought his face might atone for his lack of brains; I thought that perhaps if I took him in hand he might do something in the House of Lords—his old father can’t live much longer—but I gave it up. He is simply incapable of any coherent thought at all. He can’t spell; he can’t add, and once when I asked him if he liked Rachmaninoff, he thought it was the man who had built the Pyramids.” This and much more came back to Ada Laverton as she turned over in her mind the sudden wild idea that had come to her. Above all things she wanted to see Cynthia married; she was so utterly happy herself that she longed for her friend to share it too. She knew, as no one else did, what a wonderful wife and pal Cynthia would make to the right man. But it must be the right man; it must be the real thing. And like a blinding flash had come the thought of the Hermit—the Hermit who had come into the neighbourhood six months previously, and taken the little farm standing in the hollow overlooking the sea. For, as she frequently told John, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was tied to a silly old idiot of a husband, she’d have married the Hermit herself. “No, he doesn’t feed ravens,” she remarked at length. “Only puppies. He breeds Cairns and Aberdeens. We’ll stroll up and see him after tea.” “A hermit breeding dogs!” Cynthia sat up lazily. “My dear, you intrigue me.”