"That depends. Three weeks with him might be a very long time indeed." "Oh, but if _that_ happened again you'd have told me," she had said, with the same off-handedness. "I might not have done so. You left it entirely to me." "Well, no news is usually good news. And I wasn't wasting my time. I did get a proposal." "About that. And forgive me, because I don't mean it rudely. But is that a joke?" "Not a bit of a joke. He did want to marry me. So you see that's Derry's too." "What is?" "_That_ is. The more--let's say desirable I am, if I don't scandalise you, the more I have for him. And anyhow I'm here now." "Did you ask Madge to ask you?" "Yes. In the end I thought I would. There was no hurry, but there was no sense in positively wasting time. You say he's at St Briac. Where's that? I don't know this coast." "Six or seven miles. A tram takes you all the way." "Then we'll look him up. But I want to do a bit of shopping with Madge first. Must have a couple of hats. I hardly bought a single thing to come away with." And her manner ever since had been for all the world as if something was inevitable, would come of itself, in its own good time, whether she lifted a finger to further it or not. It may sound fantastic to you, but I could almost have believed that when she had taken that yellow thing from her own shoulders and had put it over mine, she had invested me with something more than a garment, something almost of herself. I had seen Jennie's disdainful glance at the coquetry with which she had cast it about me; almost insolently she had allowed her own towelling to drop where it would; and Julia now enveloped me in a double sense. Cloak or no cloak, she claimed all my thoughts, all my gazing. For I and I only knew why she was in France. Her errand was the deadlier the less haste she made. I had sought to interpose between him and Jennie because Jennie was too young; could I now step between him and Julia because Julia was too old? Moreover, both women now knew his terrific secret. The exquisite complication I had dreaded to entertain was upon us in its perfection. What, between the three of them, was to happen now? For Julia he was on his way For Jennie he hoped to go back to sixteen. forward again. Julia's influence over him had But I could guess what calm been to rob him of eleven and healing had brooded over years in a single night. him as he stood with Jennie in the Tower. Julia had strangely made herself Jennie knew nothing of this, his scapegoat and had and yet had an instinct that left him lighthearted, innocent, Julia Oliphant was a person free. to be kept at arm's length.