you sleep last night--after?"

She nodded fervently to that.

It was raining really hard now, swishing and dripping out in the
darkness, and he whispered:

"Our stars would be drowned to-night."

"Do you really think we have stars?"

"We might. But mine's safe, of course; your hair IS jolly, Sylvia."

She gazed at him, very sweet and surprised.

XIV

Anna did not receive the boy's letter in the Tyrol. It followed her to
Oxford. She was just going out when it came, and she took it up with the
mingled beatitude and almost sickening tremor that a lover feels touching
the loved one's letter. She would not open it in the street, but carried
it all the way to the garden of a certain College, and sat down to read
it under the cedar-tree. That little letter, so short, boyish, and dry,
transported her halfway to heaven. She was to see him again at once, not
to wait weeks, with the fear that he would quite forget her! Her husband
had said at breakfast that Oxford without 'the dear young clowns'
assuredly was charming, but Oxford 'full of tourists and other strange
bodies' as certainly was not. Where should they go? Thank heaven, the
letter could be shown him! For all that, a little stab of pain went
through her that there was not one word which made it unsuitable to show.
Still, she was happy. Never had her favourite College garden seemed so
beautiful, with each tree and flower so cared for, and the very wind
excluded; never had the birds seemed so tame and friendly. The sun shone
softly, even the clouds were luminous and joyful. She sat a long time,
musing, and went back forgetting all she had come out to do. Having both
courage and decision, she did not leave the letter to burn a hole in her
corsets, but gave it to her husband at lunch, looking him in the face,
and saying carelessly:

"Providence, you see, answers your question."

He read it, raised his eyebrows, smiled, and, without looking up,
murmured:

"You wish to prosecute this romantic episode?"

Did he mean anything--or was it simply his way of putting things?

"I naturally want to be anywhere but here."

"Perhaps you would like to go alone?"

He said that, of course, knowing she could not say: Yes. And she
answered simply: "No."

"Then let us both go--on Monday. I will catch the young man's trout;
thou shalt catch--h'm!--he shall catch--What is it he catches--trees?
Good! That's settled."

And, three days later, without another w