As they neither called for their account nor to have the tea things taken away, after a while the woman stealthily opened the door and, unknown, looked at one of the prettiest pictures ever within her walls. Letty Lane sat on the window-seat, her golden head, her white form against the glow, and the boy by her side had his arms around her, and her head was on his breast. They were both young. They might have been white birds blown in there, nesting in the humble inn, and the woman of the house, who had not heard the waters of the Thames flow softly for nothing, judged them gently and sighed with pleasure as she shut the door. Here at Maidenhead Dan had left his boat and the motor took them back. Nothing spoiled his bliss that day, and he said her name a thousand times that night in his dreams. Jealousies—and, when he would let himself think, they were not one, they were many—faded away. The duties that a life with her would involve did not disturb him. For many a long year, come what might, be what would, he would recall the glowing of that sunset reflected under the inn windows, the singing of the thrushes and the flash of the white dress and the fine little white shoes which he had held in the palm of his ardent hand, which he had kissed, as he told her with all his heart that she should rest her tired feet for ever. There grew in him that day a reverence for her, determined as he was to bring into her life by his wealth and devotion everything of good. His loving plans for her forming in his brain somewhat chaotic and very much fevered, brought him nearer than he had ever been before to the picture of his mother. His father it wasn’t easy for Dan to think of in connection with the actress. He didn’t dare to dwell on the subject, but he had never known his mother, and that pale ideal he could create as he would. In thinking of her he saw only tenderness for Letty Lane—only love; and in his room the night after the row on the river, the night after the long idyl in the sunset-room of the inn, something like a prayer came to his young lips, and, when its short form was finished, a smile brought it to an end as he remembered the line in Letty Lane’s own opera: “She will teach you how to pray in an Eastern form of prayer.” The ring he had given the Duchess of Breakwater had been her own choice, a ruby. He had asked her, through Galorey, to keep it and to wear it later, when she could think of him kindly, in an ornament of some kind or another. The duchess had not refused. The ring he bought for Letty Lane, although there was no engagement announced between them, was the largest, purest diamond he could _with decency_ ask her to put on her hand! It sparkled like a great drop of clear water from some fountain on a magic continent. In another shop strands of pink coral set through with diamonds caught his fancy and he bought her yards of them, ropes of them, smiling to think how his boyhood’s dreams were come true.