"Won't you have your shawl on, Mother?" "Well, perhaps I will. It's much colder here than it was last year." The younger woman got up once more, this time to fold the shawl around her mother's shoulders. "Oh, Lord!" muttered the man impatiently, "will she never sit still?" He looked attentively at the pair. "Gentle, tyrant mother," he told himself, "and virgin daughter withering on her stem." But as he looked, something in the short-haired woman's appearance arrested him. "It's a fine face, even now," he thought, "and the mouth is positively beautiful. I wonder why--I wonder how it happened. Who is it she reminds me of?" The woman turned her head and their eyes met; he thought she started and looked more intently; at all events she turned to her mother and said something in a low voice. In a second or two the old lady glanced at him. The man felt his heart tighten. Something in the face of this short-haired woman and a certain gruff quality in her voice were strangely familiar. Just then his attention was distracted, and when he looked again the women's faces were turned away and they were speaking in an undertone. The pair finished their dinner and left the room, while he sat on stupidly, letting the years slip backwards. 2 Presently he got up and walked to the door. He went out into the hall, meaning to look at the hotel register. The hall was empty except for the short-haired woman, who had apparently anticipated him, for she was turning over the pages of the book. He came up quietly and looked over her shoulder. Her finger was hovering near his own entry: "Sir Richard Benson, Harley Street, London." She saw him out of the corner of her eye. "I was looking you up," she explained simply. "So I see," he said and smiled. "May I look you up, too?" She nodded and he turned back a page. "Mrs. and Miss Ogden, Seabourne," he read aloud. They stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then: "Oh, Joan!" "Richard!" They clasped hands and laughed, then they clasped hands all over again and laughed again too, but with tears in their eyes. Presently he said: "After all these years, Joan, and to meet in a place like this!" "Yes, it's a long time, isn't it!" "It's a lifetime," he replied gravely. They went out on to the veranda. "Mother's going to bed," she told him. "I can stay out here for twenty minutes." "Why only twenty minutes, Joan?" "Because I must go and read to her when she's undressed; she's still rather sleepless after the journey." He was silent. Then he said: "Well, tell me all about it, please; I want to hear everything." She smiled at the familiar words. "That won't take twenty minutes; I can say it in less than two." "Then say it," he commanded. "I was bottled, after all," she told him with mock solemnity, but her voice shook a little. He took her hand and pressed it very gently. "I know that, my dear." She said: "You stopped writing rather suddenly, I thought. Why was that?"