ate, or she would not have sailed so close to
the wind.

'Ah, but I accepted later!' he said quickly, feeling in his satisfaction
in an epigrammatic answer a certain measure of victory. He felt his
mistake when she went on calmly:

'Offers like that are not repeated. They are but phantoms, after all.
They come at their own choice, when they do come; and they stay but the
measure of a breath or two. You cannot summon them!' Leonard fell into
the current of the metaphor and answered:

'I don't know that even that is impossible. There are spells which call,
and recall, even phantoms!'

'Indeed!' Stephen was anxious to find his purpose.

Leonard felt that he was getting on, that he was again acquiring the
upper hand; so he pushed on the metaphor, more and more satisfied with
himself:

'And it is wonderful how simple some spells, and these the most powerful,
can be. A remembered phrase, the recollection of a pleasant meeting, the
smell of a forgotten flower, or the sight of a forgotten letter; any or
all of these can, through memory, bring back the past. And it is often
in the past that the secret of the future lies!'

Miss Rowly felt that something was going on before her which she could
not understand. Anything of this man's saying which she could not fathom
must be at least dangerous; so she determined to spoil his purpose,
whatever it might be.

'Dear me! That is charmingly poetic! Past and future; memory and the
smell of flowers; meetings and letters! It is quite philosophy. Do
explain it all, Mr. Everard!' Leonard was not prepared to go on under
the circumstances. His own mention of 'letter,' although he had
deliberately used it with the intention of frightening Stephen, had
frightened himself. It reminded him that he had not brought, had not
got, the letter; and that as yet he was not certain of getting the money.
Stephen also had noted the word, and determined not to pass the matter
by. She said gaily:

'If a letter is a spell, I think you have a spell of mine, which is a
spell of my own weaving. You were to show me the letter in which I asked
you to come to see me. It was in that, I think you said, that I
mentioned your debts; but I don't remember doing so. Show it to me!'

'I have not got it with me!' This was said with mulish sullenness.

'Why not?'

'I forgot.'

'That is a pity! It is always a pity to forget things in a business
transaction; as this is. I think, Auntie, we