“A long, perfect day in this heavenly sunshine, pretending anything in the world you like that will make us forget the stale, boresome, old week-day world. Then, at the end of it, the unfolding of a glorious plan that is an explanation in itself.” Hal looked doubtful, and seemed to cogitate. He waited in an anxiety he could scarce conceal, watching her mobile, sensitive face. Finally the sunshine and the light-hearted carelessness made the strongest appeal, and she gave in. “Very well. If it had been dull and cloudy I would not have agreed. But one daren’t trifle with sunshine. We’ll take our fill of it while it lasts.” So it happened that their last long day was one of the best they had known—each being clever enough to carry out the suggested programme and banish the following cloud for the time. Hal was a little feverish—a little gayer than usual, with some hidden strain; a little pathetically anxious to act an indifference she could not possibly feel, concerning that rumour, and throw herself heart and soul into their compact of forgetting everything for a little while except the sunshine and the exhilarating dash through a spring-decked England. In some places the hedges were white with hawthorn; and in sheltered nooks they sped past primroses, like pale stars in the grass. There were plantations of feathery, exquisite larch trees, their lovely green enhanced by tall dark pines, standing among them like sentinels. In gay gardens joyous daffodils nodded and laughed to them as they whirled past. Sir Edwin ventured an appreciative remark. “Don’t talk,” Hal said. “Pretend you are in a worldwide cathedral, and it is the great annual festival of spring.” “May I sing?” he asked humorously. “No; not as you value your life. We have only to listen to the choir. Hush, don’t you hear the birds singing the grand spring ‘Te Deum’!” But after a time she spoke herself. “Was it all like this on Thursday night—all these delicious scents and sights and sounds cast broadcast, for all who passed to enjoy?” “I expect so. Why?” The kindliness in the quizzical grey eyes was amazing, as he sat back, watching her with covert insistence, instead of the spring glories. How the divine spark changes a man for the brief moments when it reigns! Banishing utterly Stock Exchange scandals, convenient heiresses, exacting parties, the merciless claims of the god Mammon. He might have looked just so, years and years ago, before he entered that hard service, and buried all his best under layer upon layer of harsh, deadening, world-wise grasping. Pity that the best is so frail to withstand the onslaught of the demons of power and place—so easily overcome and thrust away probably for ever.