back."

"I suppose you are very busy," said Honora, detaching a copper-green
scale of moss from the boulder.

"The fact is," he explained, "that we have received an order of
considerable importance, for which I am more or less responsible.
Something of a compliment--since we are, after all, comparatively young
men."

"Sometimes," said Honora, "sometimes I wish I were a man. Women are so
hampered and circumscribed, and have to wait for things to happen to
them. A man can do what he wants. He can go into Wall Street and fight
until he controls miles of railroads and thousands and thousands of men.
That would be a career!"

"Yes," he agreed, smilingly, "it's worth fighting for."

Her eyes were burning with a strange light as she looked down the vista
of the wood road by which they had come. He flung his cigarette into the
water and took a step nearer her.

"How long have I known you?" he asked.

She started.

"Why, it's only a little more than a week," she said.

"Does it seem longer than that to you?"

"Yes," admitted Honora, colouring; "I suppose it's because we've been
staying in the same house."

"It seems to me," said Mr. Spence, "that I have known you always."

Honora sat very still. It passed through her brain, without comment,
that there was a certain haunting familiarity about this remark; some
other voice, in some other place, had spoken it, and in very much the
same tone.

"You're the kind of girl I admire," he declared. "I've been watching
you--more than you have any idea of. You're adaptable. Put you down any
place, and you take hold. For instance, it's a marvellous thing to me
how you've handled all the curiosities up there this week."

"Oh, I like people," said Honora, "they interest me." And she laughed a
little, nervously. She was aware that Mr. Spence was making love, in his
own manner: the New fork manner, undoubtedly; though what he said was
changed by the new vibrations in his voice. He was making love, too,
with a characteristic lack of apology and with assurance. She stole a
glance at him, and beheld the image of a dominating man of affairs. He
did not, it is true, evoke in her that extreme sensation which has been
called a thrill. She had read somewhere that women were always expecting
thrills, and never got them. Nevertheless, she had not realized how
close a bond of sympathy had grown between them until this sudden
announcement of his going back to New York. In a little while sh