I cannot describe the expression that came over Phyllis's face. It wasn't exactly jealousy; it wasn't exactly the expression of a beautiful female commuter who has just missed her train. It wasn't a wild look, or a happy look, or a sad look. Perhaps it was a little bit more of an aching void look than anything else. Whatever its exact nature, the wily Herring studied it with an immense satisfaction. And then his heart began to flurry in a sort of panic. "Lee!" exclaimed Phyllis, "married! Why, they're nothing but children!" She felt something encircle her waist. She looked down and saw a hand and part of an arm. "What are you doing?" she asked, in a sort of daze. "I'm trying to establish a hold on you," said Herring, and toward the end of so saying his voice broke; "and you're not to feel lonely and deserted with me standing here, are you?" For a moment it seemed to Herring that Phyllis was going to extricate herself from his encircling arm. She achieved, indeed, a quarter revolution to the left and away from him. "Don't, Phyllis!" he cried. "Don't do it! I couldn't bear it!" Then she ceased revolving to the left, stopped, and from a startled, uncertain, half-frightened young person became suddenly a warmly loving young person, warmly loved, who revolved suddenly to the right, and became the recipient of a sudden storm of ecstatic exclamations and kisses. And then, nestling close to the one and only man in the world, she listened with complete satisfaction to his efforts to explain to her just how beautiful and wonderful and good she was. XXXIV When Lee and Renier, locked in each other's arms, stood in the forest primeval, they were mistaken in imagining themselves to be unobserved. A short half-hour before, Mary Darling had received a proposal of marriage. But Mr. Sam Langham, usually so worldly-wise, had erred, perhaps, in his choice of time and place. Whatever a huge kitchen, bright with sunlight upon burnished copper, may be, it is not a romantic place. And, worse than this, Mary herself was not in a romantic mood. Certain supplies due by the morning express had not arrived. Chef was at the telephone shouting broken French to the butcher in Carrytown; one of the kitchen-maids had come down with an aching tooth, and the other had been sent upon an errand from which she should have long since returned. "Oh," exclaimed Mary, as Mr. Langham entered, smiling, "everything is in such a mess! I don't believe there's going to be any lunch to-day for any one. And I think I shall have a nervous breakdown!"