ime
for him to go. Yet he was held by a tie stronger than any which had
hitherto bound him. Here in the big old house at Bower's was the one
thing that his heart wanted.

"I could make her happy," he whispered to that inner self which warned
him. "With her as my wife and with my book a success, I could defy fate."

The day was Saturday, and all the eager old fishermen had arrived the
night before. Brinsley Tyson coming out with his rod in his hand and a
broad-brimmed hat on his head invited Geoffrey to join him. "I've a motor
boat that will take us out to the island after we have done a morning's
fishing, and Mrs. Bower has put up a lunch."

"The glare is bad for my eyes."

"Been working them too hard?"

"Yes."

"There's an awning and smoked glasses if you'll wear them. And I don't
want to go alone. David went back on me; he's got a new book. It's a
puzzle to me why any man should want to read when he can have a day's
fishing."

"If people didn't read what would become of my books?"

"Let 'em read. But not on days like this." Brinsley's fat face was
upturned to the sun. With a vine-wreath instead of his broad hat and
tunic in place of his khaki he might have posed for any of the plump old
gods who loved the good things of life.

Geoffrey, because he had nothing else to do, went with him. Anne was
invisible. On Saturday mornings she did all of the things she had left
undone during the week. She mended and sewed and washed her brushes, and
washed her hair, and gave all of her little belongings a special rub and
scrub, and showed herself altogether exquisite and housewifely.

She saw Geoffrey start out, and she waved to him. He waved back, his hand
shading his eyes. When he had gone, she cleaned all of her toilet silver,
and ran ribbons into nicely embroidered nainsook things, and put her
pillows in the sun and tied up her head and swept and dusted, and when
she had made everything shining, she had a bit of lunch on a tray, and
then she washed her hair.

Geoffrey ate lunch on the island with Brinsley Tyson. He liked the old
man immensely. There was a flavor about his worldliness which had nothing
to do with stale frivolities; it was rather a thing of fastidious taste
and of tempered wit. He was keen in his judgments of men, and charitable
in his estimates of women.

Brinsley Tyson had known Baltimore before the days of modern cities. He
had known it before it had cut its hotels after the palace pattern, and