"Probably," returned Julian composedly, "nine women out of ten are dogs in the manger, but you, my dear Alice, are the tenth. I shall be glad to see Montrose. Tell me all about him." "That is difficult," said Miss Enistor absently, "let me think for a moment." Julian could not see why it should be difficult for a young girl in the first delicious phase of a perfect passion to talk to an intimate friend, such as he truly was, of her feelings. But he did not understand what was passing in Alice's mind. Her wooing was of so unusual a character, and had so much to do with psychic matters concerning which Hardwick knew nothing, that it was hard to explain the swift love which had drawn her and Douglas together. For one moment she hesitated, and the next decided not to speak. Julian would not understand, and she evaded a direct answer to his question by a truly feminine subterfuge. "I would rather you judged Douglas for yourself without looking at him through my eyes. He will be here in a few days and then you can give me your opinion." "Well," said Julian in his usual stolid way, "perhaps you are right!" after which calm acceptance of the situation he became silent. While the two young people had been talking, the car had pursued its way towards Tremore steadily and swiftly. Along the winding white roads it glided, with the spreading no-man's-land of purple heather on either side. How Alice loved it all; the vast moorlands sprinkled with grey blocks of granite; the tumbled steepness of black cliffs; the far-stretching spaces of the gleaming ocean and the life-giving winds that breathed across the limitless lands. For the moment she wondered how she had ever endured the narrow, muffling London streets, with their twice-breathed airs and garish lights. Like a thing of life the great car swung untiringly along, and the landscape widened out at every turn of the road. She felt as though she had come out of a stifling cavern into a spacious world, and flung out her hands in ecstatic greeting to the majesty of Nature. Reborn through love into a wider consciousness, the girl's seeing and hearing now embraced an appreciation of much to which she had been formerly deaf and blind. Sound seemed sweeter, colour more vivid and life dearer. There was a feeling of spring in the autumnal air, and Alice felt that she wished to dance and sing and generally rejoice out of sheer lightheartedness. "I am made one with Nature," she exclaimed, thrilling to the beauty of land and sea. "Doesn't Shelley say something like that in 'Adonais'?" "I never read poetry," replied Julian stolidly. "To my mind poets only say in many words what a journalist says in few." "What a pagan sentiment," cried Miss Enistor gaily, "and how untrue. Oh, there is Tremore!"