He swore that she should never be lonely again; and, by the time they reached their house by the sea, he had half-exultingly dismissed his fictitious mission from his mind. All the apprehensions of the narrow Northern kitchen melted in the joy of her. All danger had vanished like a naughty black cloud sped to nothing by the sun. The mythical past had to remain; but henceforward his life would be as clear to her as her own exquisite life to him. In their wind-swept home they gave themselves up to deferred raptures, kissing and laughing after the foolish way of lovers. To grace his return she had filled the rooms with flowers—roses and sweet peas—which she bought extravagantly in the neighbouring seaside town. The scent of them mingled delicately with the salt of the sea. To her joy he was quick to praise them. She had wondered whether they would be noticed by one so divinely careless of material things. He even found delight in the meal which Myra served soon after their arrival—he so indifferent to quality of food. “Everything is you,” said he; “scent and taste and sight. You inform the universe and give it meaning.” Her eyes grew moist as she swiftly laid her hand on his. “Am I really all that to you?” She laughed with a little catch in her throat. “How can I live up to it?” He raised her hand to his lips. “If only you went on existing like a flower, your beauty and fragrance would be all in all to me. But you are a flower with a bewildering soul. So you merely have to be as you are.” He was in earnest. Women had played little or no part in his inner life, which, for all his follies, had been lived on a spiritual plane. His young ambitions had been irradiated by dreams of the little Princess Tania, who had represented to him the ever-to-be-striven-for unattainable. On his reaching the age when common sense put its clammy touch on fervid imagination, the little Princess had been given away in marriage to a young Russian nobleman of vast fortune, and he himself had driven her to the wedding with naught but a sentimental pang. But the flower-like, dancing, elusive quality of her had remained in his soul as that which was only desirable and ever to be sought for in woman. And—miracle of miracles!—he had found it in Olivia. And she was warm and real, the glowing incarnation of the cold but perfect ghost of his boyhood’s aspirations. She was verily the Princess of his dream come true. And she had an odd air of the little Princess Tania—the same dark, wavy hair and laughing eyes and the same crisp sweetness in her English speech.