lves if we stopped in town, as everybody will be away. I should not
object to that in the least. But, Victor, if Alice wants me, I think I
had better go down with her. There aren't really any people in the world
except you and me, but they think there are." Her brown eyes softened
again. "I think that is an ungrateful and selfish speech of mine," she
said. "I am sorry; I don't deserve my friends."

"I like the ungrateful and selfish speech," said he.

"Then I present you with it. Yes, I think we had better go down
there. I long to see Alice again, and Daisy. Dear Daisy, have you
seen her lately?"

"As one may say that one has seen a meteor. She has flashed by."

"Ah, Daisy shall not flash by me. She must flash to me, and stop there,
burning. Oh, look, it is the month of the briar-rose. See how the
hedges foam with pink blossom. And the fields, look, knee-deep in long
grasses and daisies and buttercups. I am home again, thank Heaven. I am
home. Home met me on the pier, my darling--the heart of home met me
there."

"And you did not expect it in the least?" he asked. "You said so, at
any rate."

"Did I really? What very odd things one says! It is lucky that nobody
believes them."

CHAPTER IV.

They parted at Victoria, and Mrs. Halton drove straight to Lady
Nottingham's, leaving her maid to claim and capture her luggage. She had
not known till she returned to London how true a Londoner she was at
heart, how closely the feel and sense of the great grey dirty city was
knit into her self. For it was the soil out of which had grown all the
things in her life which "counted" or were significant; it had been the
scene of all her great joys and sorrows, and to-day all those who made
up her intimate life, friends and lover, were gathered here.

There were many other places in the world to which she felt grateful:
sunny hillsides overlooking the spires of Florence; cool woods on the
Italian Riviera through which stirred the fresh breezes off the dim blue
sea below; galleries and churches of Venice, and the grey-green
stretches of its lagoons. To all these her debt of gratitude was deep,
for it was in them, and through their kindly sunny aid, that during the
last year she had recaptured peace and content.

But her gratitude to them was not of the quality of love; she felt
rather towards them as a patient feels towards the doctors and nurses to
whose ministrations he owes his return of health and the removal of the