She assented with idle interest. Where should she go? He suggested Spain. Zaraws, not far from St. Sebastian, on the Bay of Biscay; fairly secure from English; warm, picturesque, with the comforts of a civilised hotel. From personal acquaintance he launched forth into glowing description. The golden sands and the purple seas of the south. The olive gardens with their shivering silver and green. The dark-eyed Basques. The wealth of sun and colour. Irene leant her elbow on the table and her eyes dwelt softly on him. “Does it please you?” he asked. “The way you talk of it does. I would sooner have that. It does me more good. You always speak as if the subject of the moment were the one interest of your life. I wish you had a parliamentary career before you.” He laughed. “That is dangerously near satire, Renie.” “Women only use satire when they want to hurt, and to hurt deeply,” she said. “I want to--” She stopped, embarrassed. “What?” he asked. Her eyes fell before his. She made a pretence of eating. Jane entered with the next course. They discussed the weather, until she had retired. “What could I do to make your life happier, Renie?” he asked. A futile question; yet men will continue to put it. “What can I do to make _yours_ happier? That is the all-important point to me.” “Nothing,” he said in a low voice. “This is the happiest time of my life.” “There is nothing I could do--beyond asking you to dinner?” “Nothing,” he repeated. “If there were, I should tell you.” “You have only to ask,” said Irene. Woman could say no more. There was a short silence. Hugh understood--yet did not divine. The inner man fell at her feet, blessing her for her sweet graciousness of surrender. He was fine enough to perceive that she was grateful to him for restraining expression of the love long known to her, and that her words were meant to relieve him of the obligation to which he had bound himself. But it was divine and tender charity. Nothing more. It was her way to reward royally out of proportion to services rendered. “Life is a queer tangle,” he remarked after a while. “The art of unravelling it is the art of living. But one must hold the master thread.” “The master thread is work,” said Hugh, forcing his tone to lightness. “No.” “What is it, then?” She did not answer. A little involuntary sigh fluttered her bosom. “I wish I could put you back into your bright circle, Renie,” he said, putting his own interpretation upon her mood. With Harroway’s words fresh in his memory, his heart grew heavy. “Yes, I miss my friends,” she replied absently.