job
for a girl in hot weather," he added, looking at Dulcie, "--an easy
swimming pose in some nice cool little Adirondack lake----"

"Seriously," interrupted Mandel, twirling his monocle impatiently by
its greasy string, "I mean it, Barres." He turned and looked at the
lithely speeding Arethusa. "If that is Dulcie, I can give her a good
part in----"

"You hear, Dulcie?" enquired Barres. "These two kind gentlemen have
what they consider attractive jobs for you. All I can offer you is
liberty to tumble around the hayfields at Foreland Farms, with my
sketching easel in the middle distance. Now, choose your job,
Sweetness."

"The hayfields and----"

Dulcie's voice faded to a whisper; Barres, seated beside her, leaned
nearer, bending his head to listen.

"And _you_," she murmured again, "--if you want me."

"I always want you," he whispered laughingly, in return.

Esme regarded the scene with weariness and chagrin.

"Come on," he said languidly to Mandel, "we'll buy her some flowers
for the evil she does us. She'll need 'em; she'll be finished before
this amateur sculptor finishes his blooming Arethusa."

Mandel lingered:

"I'm going up to Northbrook in a day or two, Barres. If you
change--change Dulcie's mind for her, just call me up at the Adolf
Gerhardt's."

"Dulcie will call you up if she changes my mind."

Dulcie laughed.

When they had gone, Barres said:

"You know I haven't thought about the summer. What was your idea about
it?"

"My--idea?"

"Yes. You'd want a couple of weeks in the country somewhere, wouldn't
you?"

"I don't know. I never went away," she replied vaguely.

It occurred to him, now, that for all his pleasant toleration of
Soane's little daughter during the two years and more of his residence
in Dragon Court, he had never really interested himself in her
well-being, never thought to enquire about anything which might really
concern her. He had taken it for granted that most people have some
change from the stifling, grinding, endless routine of their
lives--some respite, some quiet interval for recovery and rest.

And so, returning from his own vacations, it never occurred to him
that the shy girl whom he permitted within his precincts, when
convenient, never knew any other break in the grey monotony--never
left the dusty, soiled, and superheated city from one year's summer to
another.

Now, for the first time, he realised it.

"We'll go up there," he said. "My family is a