y invented by
my fancy."

"What attitude? What do you mean, Guy?"

He shook his head.

"My dear, if you aren't conscious of it, I'm certainly not going to
attempt to put it into words and involve myself in such a net."

"How tantalizing you are!"

"No, I'm not. If you have the least inclination to think I may be right,
then you know what I mean and you can do what I ask. If you haven't the
least notion of what I mean, then it was all my fancy, and I'm certainly
not going to give my baseless fancies away."

"This is all too cryptic," she murmured.

"Then let it remain undeciphered," he said, smiling; and he led the
conversation more directly towards their marriage and the strangeness of
the Rectory without Margaret.

Richard spent the night at Plashers Mead, and Guy heard the halting
account of two years' uncertainty, of the bungalow that had been taken
and embowered against Margaret's coming, and of the way in which his
bridge had spanned not merely the river, but the very ocean, and even
time itself.

Pauline's birthday morning was cloudless, and Guy, though to himself he
was inclined to blame the action as weak, went to church and knelt
beside her. Then afterwards there was the scene of breakfast on the lawn
that already, with only this first repetition, wore for him an
immemorial air, so that he could no longer imagine a May Day that was
not thus inaugurated. The presentation of his poems in proof had not a
bit less wonderful effect than he had hoped, for Pauline could never
finish turning over the pages and loving the ludicrously tumble-down
binding.

"Oh, it's so touching! I wish they could all be bound like this. And how
I adore Richard's paper-knife."

The four lovers disappeared after breakfast to enjoy the flashing May
Day, and Monica, left alone with her mother, looked a little sad, she,
the only one of those three lovely daughters of the Rectory still
undisturbed by the demands of the invading world.

May that year was like the fabled Spring of poets; and Guy and Pauline
were left free to enjoy the passionate and merry month as perhaps never
before had they enjoyed any season, not even that dreamed-away fortnight
at Ladingford last year. They had ceased for a while with the engagement
of Richard and Margaret to be the central figures of the Rectory,
whether for blame or commendation, and, desiring nothing better than to
be left without interference, they were lost in apple-blossom to
every-da