ome back very sweetly: I had a happy
childhood, on the whole, one that never lacked love and sympathy.
Believe me, ye parents, who think that these days will soon be
forgotten, they make a difference, these idle memories, and life is
inexpressibly richer if those early days are rich in pleasant little
adventures and cheery little experiences, cheerily shared! I have more
to remember than Roger, whose early boyhood was, though far wealthier
than mine, strangely poorer from the lack of just this mellow glow
over and through it.

And Margarita's? We shall never know what filled those silent,
childish hours of hers, alone with the dogs and the gulls. Her quaint
lonely games, her towers of sand and shell, her musings by the tide,
her dreams on the sun-warmed rocks--I fancy I see them all in watching
Peggy. She cannot tell herself.

"I began to live," she says, "when I met Roger."

"You have lived a great deal, since, have you not, Margarita?" I say,
a little wistfully, perhaps, she is so splendid and so complete, and
one seems so broken and colourless and middle-aged beside her.

"A great deal. Yes, I suppose so," she answers, and her eye rests
quickly but surely on Roger, on each of the yellow heads, then on the
dark one, and then, at last, on me.

"You have given up a great deal for those handsome heads, Margarita,"
I go on, under the spur of some curious impulse, "did you never regret
it? You had the world at your feet, Madame used to say, and you gave
it up ..."

She looks at me with the only eyes in the world that can make me
forget Peggy's, and gives me both her hands (one with a flashing,
cloudy star sapphire burning on it) in that free, lovely gesture so
characteristic of her.

"Don't, Jerry!" she says in her sweet, husky voice, and Roger hearing
it, turns slightly from his guests and gives her a swift, strong look.
The gay wedding crowd melts away, the clatter of the wine-glasses is
the wash of pebbles on the beach, her hand in mine seems wet with
flying spray, as she speaks in that rich, vibrating voice, for me
alone:

"I had the world at my feet--yes, Jerry dear, and I nearly lost it,
did I not? I did not know, you see. And I have it now, Jerry, I have
it now!" (O, Susan of the bank account, who need not marry to get away
from home, will that look come to your eyes and glow there till your
face is too bright for an elderly bachelor to bear? Indeed, I hope it
may!)

"There is only one world for a woman