"I ought to say one thing while I'm about it," he said in a halting and embarrassed voice. "I got your note, Julia. I know what you mean. How you tumbled to it I don't know, and I needn't say it's an unspeakable comfort having the two of you. I'm not going to look a gift-horse like that in the mouth, so if you don't mind we won't talk about it. I suppose George told you, though?" "Yes." "Then that's all right. Of course he won't tell anybody else. If he'd asked me first I might have kicked a bit, but it's turned out all right, so that's all we need worry about.... Now what are we going to do to-day? Those trout at all muddy, George? Give me a mayfly and let's have a try at one of 'em----" I got him a rod and warned him against the telephone-wire that has to cross one end of the pond. I left him and Julia mounting the cast on the verandah. I went up to my study. I went there from a motive not unlike gratitude to God. An embodied ghost Derry might be to the rest of the world, but our little private triumvirate had still a normal basis. He understood the whole situation, and so to us was no ghost. Nor was even the prospect of his Wanderjahre now quite so intimidating. The terror would have been to think of him as an _ignis fatuus_, unconscious of himself, flitting hither and thither over the face of the Continent at large. _Cogito, ergo sum._ The distance of the lamp from the table's edge was apparently not an irrevocably fixed factor. "By sheer strength of will" he had been able to vary it. He _could_ enjoy intensely and reason infallibly, if not at one and the same time, at any rate by turns. He _was_ still capable of work and of play, and at the maximum of either. How, then, did she stand with her wild scheme of marrying him? I sat down at my table and worked it out thus: While he was in his working But while he was at play his mood he was inaccessible to accessibility was a raised her. power. As his secretary she could not But as his playmate she met hope for more than a repetition him on his return journey--he of her former experience. as he had been, but she far more _rusée_ and resolved. His work occupied by far the Therefore his work stood in greater portion of his time. her way. Therefore his work must be But I had encouraged him to discouraged. speak of it. I had done her a disservice. But they were at play at this moment, setting up a fishing-rod on the verandah. His Wanderjahre would presently She knew this, and would be upon him again. lose no time. I think that states it fairly. And she had the whole day and the whole of to-morrow before her. I began to wonder whether I had done wisely in asking them to stay after all.