nd profitable morning she had ever spent. She sat
there for hours, and they all flew. People passed in cars and saw her,
and it didn't disturb her in the least. She perfectly remembered she
ought to be helping Anna-Rose pick and arrange the flowers for the
tea-tables, and she didn't mind. She knew Anna-Rose would be astonished
and angry at her absence, and it left her unmoved. By midday she was
hopelessly compromised in the eyes of Acapulco, for the people who had
motored through the lane told the people who hadn't what they had seen.
Once a great car passed with a small widow in it, who looked astonished
when she saw the pair but had gone almost before Elliott could call out
and wave to her.

"That's my sister," he said. "You and she will love each other."

"Shall we?" said Anna-Felicitas, much pleased by this suggestion of
continuity in their relations; and remarked that she looked as if she
hadn't got a husband.

"She hasn't. Poor little thing. Rotten luck. Rotten. I hate people to
die now. It seems so infernally unnatural of them, when they're not in
the fighting. He's only been dead a month. And poor old Dellogg was such
a decent chap. She isn't going anywhere yet, or I'd bring her up to tea
this afternoon. But it doesn't matter. I'll take you to her."

"Shall you?" said Anna-Felicitas, again much pleased. Dellogg. The name
swam through her mind and swam out again. She was too busy enjoying
herself to remark it and its coincidences now.

"Of course. It's the first thing one does."

"What first thing?"

"To take the divine girl to see one's relations. Once one has found her.
Once one has had"--his voice fell to a whisper--"the God-given luck to
find her." And he laid his hand very gently on hers, which were clasped
together in her lap.

This was a situation to which Anna-Felicitas wasn't accustomed, and she
didn't know what to do with it. She looked down at the hand lying on
hers, and considered it without moving. Elliott was quite silent now,
and she knew he was watching her face. Ought she, perhaps, to be going?
Was this, perhaps, one of the moments in life when the truly judicious
went? But what a pity to go just when everything was so pleasant. Still,
it must be nearly lunch-time. What would Aunt Alice do in a similar
situation? Go home to lunch, she was sure. Yet what was lunch when one
was rapidly arriving, as she was sure now that she was, at the condition
of being in love? She must be, or she wouldn