Katharine returned to her examination of the flower beds; and Paul lay back, and blew rings of smoke into the air, and watched her through them with an amused look on his face. He recalled some casual words of Heaton's which had annoyed him very much at the time,--"If I'm not in love with a woman, I don't want to give her another thought;" and he glanced at her slim waist as she sat there, and tried lazily to analyse his own feelings towards her. "What are you thinking about?" she asked, turning round again. "About you," he said, and brought his feet lightly to the ground and sat up and stretched himself. "What about me?" she asked curiously. "I am wondering if you will miss me very much when I am gone," he said, and slid slowly along the chair until he sat behind her, where he could just see her rounded profile as she turned her face away from him. "Oh, yes, awfully! I wish, I do wish you were not going!" She was looking very hard at the flower beds now. "So do I, Miss Katharine. It has been quite delightful; I shall never forget your sweet care of me. But you will soon forget all about me. And besides, there is Ted." "What has that got to do with it?" she asked swiftly. "Oh, nothing, surely! It was merely an inconsequent reflection on my part." There was a pause for a few moments. "Talk," he said suddenly, and put his hand gently against her cheek. It warmed under his touch, and he heard the tremor in her voice as she spoke. "I--I can't talk. Oh, please don't!" "Can't you? Try." She put her hand up to his, and he caught hold of her fingers, and dropped a light kiss on them as they lay crumpled up on his palm. Then he pressed them slightly, and let them go, and walked away to the house without looking at her again. His countenance was as unmoved as if he had just been talking archæology to the Rector; but his reflections seemed absorbing, and he hardly roused himself to move aside when Ted came lounging out of the house and ran against him in the porch. "Hullo!" said Ted. "I'm awfully sorry; I didn't see you, really." "Oh, no matter!" said Paul, who, never being guilty of a clumsy action himself, could afford to remain undisturbed. "Miss Katharine's in the summer house," he added, in answer to Ted's disconsolate look. "We've been reading Browning. At least, Miss Katharine out of her goodness has been trying to make a convert of me. I am afraid I was an unappreciative listener." Ted glanced inquiringly at him. Somehow, it was not so easy to disapprove of Paul to his face as it was behind his back. "How poor!" he said sympathetically. "Kitty does play so cheap, sometimes, doesn't she? Browning is enough to give you the hump, I should think. But she never does that to me." "Probably," said Paul, disengaging a cigarette paper; "she would not feel the same necessity in your case. You would have greater facilities for conversation, I mean. Won't you have a cigarette?"