eard his footstep on the gravel. By that time Jocelyn had
heard the whole story. She had asked one or two questions which somehow
cast a different light upon the narrative, and she had listened to the
answers with a grave, judicial little smile--the smile of a judge whose
verdict was pre-ordained, whose knowledge had nothing to gain from
evidence.

Because she loved him she took his story and twisted it and turned it to
a shape of her own liking. Those items which he had considered
important she passed over as trifles; the trifles she magnified into the
corner-stones upon which the edifice was built. She set the lame story
upon its legs and it stood upright. She believed what he had never told;
and much that he related she chose to discredit--because she loved
him. She perceived motives where he assured her there were none;
she recognised the force of circumstances where he took the blame to
himself--because she loved him. She maintained that the past was good,
that he could not have acted differently, that she would not have had it
otherwise--because she loved him.

And who shall say that she was wrong?

Jack went out to meet Maurice Gordon when they heard his footsteps, and
as they walked back to the house he told him. Gordon was quite honest
about it.

"I hoped," he said, "when I ran against you in the wood, that that was
why you had come back. Nothing could have given me greater happiness.
Hang it, I AM glad, old chap!"

They sat far into the night arranging their lives. Jack was nervously
anxious to get back to England. He could not rid his mind of the picture
he had seen as he left his father's presence to go and take his passage
to Africa--the picture of an old man sitting in a stiff-backed chair
before a dying fire. Moreover, he was afraid of Africa; the Irritability
of Africa had laid its hand upon him almost as soon as he had set his
foot upon its shore. He was afraid of the climate for Jocelyn; he was
afraid of it for himself. The happiness that comes late must be firmly
held to; nothing must be forgotten to secure it, or else it may slip
between the fingers at the last moment.

Those who have snatched happiness late in life can tell of a thousand
details carefully attended to--a whole existence laid out in preparation
for it, of health fostered, small pleasures relinquished, days carefully
spent.

Jack Meredith was nervously apprehensive that his happiness might even
now slip through his fingers. Tr