a headache. I offered sympathy and
companionship, but she felt like being alone. Poor Daisy!"

Jeannie's voice suddenly died. She meant him to say something about
Daisy, but for herself she felt as if she could not go on talking.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought she wasn't looking very brilliant. She
should have come out with us for a run in the motor. Jove! it is hot
even here. I think it was an excellent plan not to go any further;
besides, I want to talk most awfully."

A week ago Jeannie had loathed the thought of this man even as, and for
the same reason, she loathed the thought of Paris when she passed
through it. But at the moment she did not loathe the thought of him at
all, nor did she loathe him. She who so loved the sunshine and joy of
life could not but like one who took so keen and boyish a pleasure in
its pleasantness, and, boylike also, turned so uncompromising a back on
all that was unpleasant or even puzzling.

He had no use for unpleasantness and no head for puzzles. From an
intellectual point of view he might have been called stupid; but
intellectual though Jeannie was, she never took her view of life or her
estimate of people from that standpoint. Affection and simplicity and
good-fellowship were things that seemed to matter to her much more.

From the human point of view, then, which does not concern itself with
one's neighbour's intellectual qualities any more than it concerns
itself with his morals, she had quickly grown to like this simple,
pleasant man, who had so good an appetite for the joys of life. And her
liking for him made her task far more difficult and far more repulsive
to her than she had anticipated.

She had thought that as far as he was concerned she would find it
perfectly easy to be ruthless, steeling herself to it by the memory of
Diana. That memory had not in the least faded, but there had come into
the foreground of her life this liking and sympathy for the man who she
hoped was to be her victim.

It made what she was doing doubly odious to her, and yet, think and
puzzle as she might, she could devise no plan but this, which, if it
succeeded, would spare Daisy the knowledge that she herself had promised
Diana to spare her.

As far as things had gone, she was fairly content with what she had
accomplished. It was all horrible to her, but the plan was working quite
well. He had scarcely seen Daisy since they had come down here, while
he had seldom been out of her own co