The Tower of Oblivion! It was his own name for it. Jennie had not understood him; the name had merely sounded sweet to her because it was his; but what apter emblem of his own life? To find this new and smiling love in the place so hauntingly whispering with memories of the old! There, in the very middle of the busyness of life, with a threshing-gin droning and the lad's whip cracking among the walking horses and man's simple bread making as it was made in the beginning, he had shut himself in with her and the blue heaven overhead. They had not kissed, but--only to be there with her, only to be rid of the lie he lived to the rest of the world and to be all truth to her!... Julia Oliphant would but bruise her heart against the stones of that Tower, thrice-strong outside but impregnably strong within. God or gland, it vanquished us all. He had found what he had so long sought, and the sooner Julia became Lady Coverham the better. I forget the precise words in which I reminded Miss Oliphant that I was still waiting for her answer. She turned on me with eyes that so kindled that for a moment I thought she had reconsidered it. "George, tell me one thing. Do you really believe it--that his clock's really set forward again?" I answered slowly. "I don't know. I won't say that I don't. Sometimes I almost have believed it. One has his word for the age he feels, and there's nothing else to go by. After all, going forward seems somehow more natural than going back. I've no other grounds for my belief." Somehow my words had not in the least the effect I intended. Everything I said or did seemed to work contrary to my intention. I saw her making a swift mental calculation. She was a woman to be desired--very thoroughly she had made it her business to be so. If I wanted her, if other men wanted her, so (I read her thought) might he be made to want her. What stood in her way? A chit of seventeen in turkey-towelling! What was a trifle like that to daunt a ripe woman who knew coquetries with escholtzia-yellow bathing-wraps? If it only lasted a year ... six months ... the rest of the summer ... the rest of the summer of her life.... "Young and beautiful," she said softly with a quickening of her breath. "I remember--I remember----" "Then forget. He'll never look at you." "Ah, he thought that once before----" "You brought him to the verge of ruin last July----" "You say he's young and beautiful--that's what I brought him to--youth and beauty----" "Unless he goes forward now--if he begins to slip back again--you know what he said his climacteric was--sixteen----" She threw up the white-panama'd head on the long throat. My eyes dropped before hers, my question was blown to the winds that set the corn a-rustling. I told you at the beginning of this story that I had never married. "And how," she said proudly, "if he had it in my arms?" III