"All, yes. Maurice, you were an old wretch! You might have come in." "Simply couldn't, old girl. I had a squint through the window, and fled and hid behind a bush. Thousands of you; it looked awful!" She laughed: "Miserable coward! I was hoping you would." "Were you, though?" he said eagerly. "I'd have come like a shot if I'd known." That made her laugh again: he was always the lover. "Well, come and have a talk now to make up," she told him. "Out here in the garden. It's frightfully hot in this room." His face beamed. He put down the implements he was carrying, wiped a hand on his waistcoat and slipped his fingers beneath her arm. "That's a stunning dress," he said. She gathered up the trailing skirt and glanced down at it, well pleased. "It is rather nice, isn't it?" "Fine! You look as pretty as a picture this evening, Nellie. I tell you, I thought so, when I squinted in through the window." "That's because I'm so happy." "So am I." He pressed her arm to show why, and "Maurice! you are a goose," was her gay comment; but for once his foolish loverlikeness pleased her; her mood was widely charitable. They paced the little lawn in silence. She suddenly asked, "You don't mind my being happy, do you?" "Mind! Good Lord!" and he pressed her arm again. "Being excited about--about it, I mean. It's natural, Maurice?" "Of course it is. Of course it is, old girl." "But you're not--it doesn't excite you?" Mr. Letham was too honest, even at risk of disturbing this happy passage, to pretend the untrue. "Well, that's nothing," he said. "That's nothing. I'm so beastly slow. An earthquake wouldn't excite me." "I don't believe it would," she laughed, then was serious. "But I'm excited," she said abruptly. "Oh, I am!" She put up her face towards the veiling sky--a dim star here and a dim star there and a faint breeze rising--and she drew a deep breath just as she had breathed deeply in the drawing-room a few moments earlier. "Oh, I am!" she repeated. "Maurice! I want to talk about it." He was not at all conscious of the full intensity of her feelings; but for such of it as he perceived he smiled at her in his tolerant way. "Well, you say," he told her. "You do the talking." She was silent for a considerable space; her mind run far ahead and occupied among thoughts to which she could not introduce him, for he had no place in them. That he shivered slightly recalled his presence to her. That his presence had been deliberately shut from among the castles she had been building caused her one of those qualms which (if we are kind) often sting us back from our worser self to our better nature. And she was kind, alternating ceaselessly between the many womanly parts she had and those other parts we all possess; only to be pitied if the events now quickly shaping for her tempted her too much, led her too far from the point whence kindness is recoverable.