“I’m glad you thought better of it? she observed. “I don’t know, even now, that I’m right in letting you love me----” “You can’t stop me,” she objected. He smiled. “I don’t think I would if I could--now.” Jean leaned up and, with a slender, dictatorial finger on the side of his face, turned his head towards her. “_Quite_ sure?” she demanded saucily. Then, without waiting for his answer: “Blaise, I do love your chin--it’s such a nice, square, your-money-or-your-life sort of chin.” Something light as a butterfly, warm as a woman’s lips, just brushed the feature in question. He drew her into his arms, folding them closely about her. “And I--I love every bit of you,” he said hoarsely. “Body and soul, I love you! Oh! Heart’s beloved! Nothing--no one in the whole world shall come between us two ever again!” CHAPTER XXX--THE GATEWAY AUGUST seemed determined to justify her claim to be numbered amongst the summer months before making her exit. Apparently she had repented her of having recently veiled the country in a mist that might have been regarded as a very creditable effort even on the part of November, for to-day the sun was blazing down out of a cloudless sky and scarcely a breath of wind swayed the nodding cornstalks, heavy with golden grain. Jean, her strained ankle now practically recovered, was tramping along the narrow footpath through the cornfield, following in Blaise’s footsteps, while Nick brought up the rear of the procession. She had not seen Claire since her engagement had become an actual fact, though a characteristically warm-hearted little note from the latter had found its way to Staple, and this morning Jean had declared her inability to exist another day “without a ‘heart-to-heart’ talk with Claire.” Hence the afternoon’s pilgrimage across the cornfield which formed part of a short cut between Staple and Charnwood. At first Jean had feared lest her new-found happiness might raise a barrier of sorts betwixt herself and Claire. The contrast between the respective hands that fate had dealt them was so glaring, and the rose and gold with which love had suddenly decked Jean’s own life seemed to make the bleak tragedy which enveloped Claire’s appear ever darker than before. But Claire’s letter, full of a quiet, unselfish rejoicing in the happiness which had fallen to the lot of her friend, had somehow smoothed away the little uncomfortable feeling which, to anyone as sensitive as Jean, had been a very real embarrassment. Nick’s felicitations, too, had been tendered with frank cordiality and affection, and with a delicate perception that had successfully concealed the sting of individual pain which the contrast could hardly fail to have induced.