To Mildred the world was again new, and she looked upon its most familiar objects with the delighted eyes of a traveller returning to a favorite foreign country. So she did not complain because when she had left the earth it had been hurrying towards the height of June, and she had returned to find the golden boughs of October already stripped by devastating winds. The flames leaped merrily under the great carved mantel-piece in her white-panelled drawing-room, showing the date 1661, and the initials of the man who had put it there, and on its narrow shelf a row of Chelsea figures which she had picked up in various corners of Oxford. The chintz curtains were drawn around the bay-window and a bright brass _scaldino_ stood in it, filled with the yellows and red-browns, the silvery pinks and mauves of chrysanthemums. The ancient charm, the delicate harmony of the room, in which every piece of furniture, every picture, every ornament, had been chosen with an exactness of taste seldom found in the young, made it more pleasurable to a cultivated eye than the gilded show drawing-rooms into which wealth too commonly crowds a medley of incongruous treasures and costly nullities. It was a free evening for Ian, and as it was but the second since the Desire of his Eyes had returned to him, his gaze followed her movements in a contented silence, as she wandered about the room in her slight grace, the whiteness of her skin showing through the transparency of a black dress, which, although it was old, Milly would have thought unsuitable for a domestic evening. When everything was just where it should be, she returned to the fire and sank into a chair thoughtfully. "How I should like some rides," she said; "but I suppose I can't have them, not unless Maxwell Davison's still in Oxford." Ian's face clouded. "He's not," he returned, shortly; and knocked the ashes out of his pipe, hesitating as to how he should put what he had to say about Maxwell Davison. Mildred put her hand over her eyes and leaned back in her chair. Suddenly the silence was broken by a burst of rippling laughter. Ian started; his own thoughts had not been so diverting. "What's the joke, Mildred?" "Oh, Ian, don't you know? Max made love to Milly and she--she bit him! Wasn't it frightfully funny?" She laughed again, with a more inward enjoyment. "I didn't know you bit him, although he richly deserved it; but of course I knew he made love to you. How do you know?" "It came to me just now in a sort of flash. I seemed to see him--to see her, floundering out of the canoe; and both of them in such a towering rage. It really was too funny." Ian's face hardened. "I am afraid I can't see the joke of a man making love to my wife." "You old stupid! He'd never have dared to behave like that to me; but Milly's such an ass."