“Yes,” she said in surprise. “In all circumstances, if you make a promise, do you keep it?” “Why, of course. If I do not think I can keep it, I do not make a promise. Why?” “Well, I want you to make me a promise—and to keep it,” he said. She looked past him, and then: “It depends what the promise is.” “I want you to promise to be my wife,” said Dick Gordon. Her hand lay in his, and she did not draw it from him. “It is . . . very . . . businesslike, isn’t it?” she said, biting her unruly underlip. “Will you promise?” She looked round at him, tears in her eyes, though her lips were smiling, and he caught her in his arms. John Bennett waited a long time for his lunch that day. Going out to see where his daughter was, he met Dick, and in a few words Dick Gordon told him all. He saw the pain in the man’s face, and dropped his hand upon the broad shoulder. “Ella has promised me, and she will not go back on her promise. Whatever happens, whatever she learns.” The man raised his eyes to the other’s face. “Will you go back on your promise?” he asked huskily. “Whatever you learn?” “I know,” said Dick simply. Ella Bennett walked on air that day. A new and splendid colour had come into her life; a tremendous certainty which banished all the fears and doubts she had felt; a light which revealed delightful vistas. Her father went over to Dorking that afternoon, and came back hurriedly, wearing that strained look which it hurt her to see. “I shall have to go to town, dearie,” he said. “There’s been a letter waiting for me for two days. I’ve been so absorbed in my picture work that I’d forgotten I had any other responsibility.” He did not look for her in the garden to kiss her good-bye, and when she came back to the house he was gone, and in such a hurry that he had not taken his camera with him. Ella did not mind being alone; in the days when Ray was at home, she had spent many nights in the cottage by herself, and the house was on the main road. She made some tea and sat down to write to Dick, though she told herself reprovingly that he hadn’t been gone more than two or three hours. Nevertheless, she wrote, for the spirit of logic avoids the lover. There was a postal box a hundred yards up the road; it was a bright night and people were standing at their cottage gates, gossipping, as she passed. The letter dropped in the box, she came back to the cottage, went inside, locked and bolted the door, and sat down with a workbasket by her side to fill in the hour which separated her from bedtime. So working, her mind was completely occupied, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, by Dick Gordon. Once or twice the thought of her father and Ray strayed across her mind, but it was to Dick she returned.