you?" cried Ronald West. "That's because you are not a writer
of romances! My dear girl, _two_ men crawled out of the long grass
thirteen feet high, at the place where the woman was waiting! Two
men--do you see? And the man who crawled out first was _not_ the man who
had sent for her! _He_ turned up just too late. Now, do you see?"

"I see," said Helen. "Thirteen is always apt to be an unlucky number."

"Oh, don't joke!" cried Ronald. "I haven't time to tell you, now, how it
all works out. But it's quite the strongest thing I've thought of yet.
And do you see what it means to me? Think of the weird, mysterious
atmosphere of Central Africa, as a setting for a really strong
love-interest. Imagine three quite modern, present-day people, learning
to know their own hearts and each other's, fighting out the crisis of
their lives according to the accepted rules and standards of twentieth
century civilisation--yet all amongst the wild primitive savagery of
uncivilised tribes, and the extraordinary primeval growths of the
unexplored jungles, where plants ape animals, and animals ape men, and
all nature rears its head with a loose rein, as if defying method, law,
order and construction! Why, merely to walk through some of the tropical
houses at Kew gives one a sort of lawless feeling! If I stay long among
the queer gnarled plants--all spiky and speckled and hairy; squatting,
plump and ungainly on the ground, or spreading huge knotted arms far
overhead, as if reaching out for things they never visibly attain--I
always emerge into the ordinary English atmosphere outside, feeling
altogether unconventional. As I walk across the well-kept lawns, I find
it almost difficult to behave with decorum. It takes me quite a long
time to become really common-place and conventional once more."

Helen smiled. "Darling," she said, "I think you must have visited the
tropical plants in Kew Gardens more frequently than I realised! I shall
have to forbid Kew, when certain important County functions are
pending."

"Oh, bother the County!" cried Ronnie. "I never went in for a French
dancing-master to bid me mind my P's and Q's! But, seriously, Helen,
don't you understand how much this means to me? Both my last novels have
had tame English settings. I can't go on forever letting my people make
love in well-kept gardens!"

"Dear Ronnie, you have a good precedent. The first couple on record made
love in a garden."

"Nonsense, darling! Eden was a qui