hen, and bathrooms. Two of the latter
had replaced two clothes-presses; the ancient cellar had been cemented
and whitewashed, and heavily stocked with furnace and kitchen coal and
kindling.

Also there were fire-dogs for the three fine old-fashioned fireplaces
in the house which had been disinterred from under bricked-in and
plastered surfaces where only the aged mantel shelves and a hole for a
stove pipe revealed their probable presence.

The carpets were too ragged and soiled to retain; the furniture too
awful. But he replaced the latter, leaving its disposition and the
pleasure of choosing new furniture and new floor coverings to Athalie.

Hers also was to be the pleasure of re-stocking the house with linen;
of selecting upholstery and curtains and the requisites for pantry,
kitchen, and dining-room.

Once she told him what she had meant to do with the bar. And he took
the liberty of doing it, turning the place into a charming
sun-parlour, where, in a stone basin, gold-fish swam and a forest of
feathery and flowering semi-tropical plants spread a fretwork of blue
shadows over the cool stone floor.

But he left the big stove as it had been; and the rather quaint old
chairs with their rush-bottoms renovated and their lustrous wood
stained and polished by years of use.

Every other day he went to Spring Pond from his office in New York to
watch the progress of the work. The contractor was under penalty;
Clive had not balked at the expense; and the work was put through with
a rush.

In the meanwhile he called on Athalie occasionally, pretending always
whenever she spoke of it, that negotiations were still under way
concerning the property in question, and that such transactions
required patience and time.

One matter, too, was gradually effaced from his mind. The tall man and
the short man who had been following him so persistently had utterly
disappeared. And nobody else seemed to have taken their places.
Eventually he forgot it altogether.

Two months was the period agreed upon for the completion of Athalie's
house and garden, and the first week in July found the work done.

It had promised to be a hot week in the city: Athalie, who had been
nowhere except for an evening at some suburban restaurant, had begun
to feel fagged and listless and in need of a vacation.

And that morning she had decided to go away for a month to some quiet
place in the mountains, and she was already consulting various folders
a