No companionship can be more delightful than that of two people wholly occupied with each other, who ride together on a summer morning. To Clodagh, the frank happiness of that stolen ride--the intoxicating sense of reality conveyed by Gore's glance, as she met it in the searching sunlight, had been things that possessed no parallel. Her natural, spontaneous capacity for joy had wakened within her like a flood of light. The misgivings--the dark hours--the feverish artificiality of the past months had been dispersed as if by magic. She had become as a child who, by the fervour of its own delight, sheds delight upon all around. And so it had been with the days that had elapsed before their departure from Buckinghamshire. They had met as often as chance would permit; but, with the exception of the first stolen ride, they had arranged no more secret meetings. And to Clodagh the half-furtive, ever-expectant existence had been fraught with new pleasure. To talk and laugh with others, to watch Gore do likewise, and all the while to know that, unseen by any eyes, unsuspected by those around them, their lives were linked together--their thoughts belonged to each other--was a source of intense excitement, of unending joy. To Nance alone did she confide her secret; and here lay another source of happiness. For every night, when the house party had retired, when Simonetta had been dismissed, and the house given over to the great sheltering stillness of the country, the sisters had exchanged such confidences as all women love--talking of their hopes, their fears, their pasts, their futures, in the half-reluctant, half-eager confessions that the dark suggests. Then at last these days of mystery and possibility had come to an end. Gore had received a letter from his mother asking him to join her in Scotland; and almost at the same hour had come a cablegram from Pierce Estcoit saying that he, with his mother and sister, had sailed for England a fortnight earlier than they had at first intended. So bidding good-bye to the Tuffnells, to her fellow guests, and to Gore, Clodagh had returned to London. And now, a fortnight later, she and Nance were driving homeward through the park in the warmth of an early afternoon. The morning had been devoted to the preparation of Nance's trousseau--a matter which, in these days, claimed absorbed attention; and, later, the sisters had lunched together at one of the restaurants. The day--or at least the earlier portion of it--had been a complete success. But now, as Clodagh's motor car sped along under the canopy of trees, already whitened with summer dust, a cloud seemed to have fallen upon the sisters' gaiety. Clodagh lay back in her corner, looking straight in front of her; Nance sat stiffly upright, her face flushed, her head held at an aggressive angle. At last, unable to maintain the silence longer, she turned and looked at her sister. "It--it seems to me so stupid!" she said.