ing the girl which caused him to
look with slight amazement and unsympathetic eyes upon the all too
obvious behaviour of his comrade Westmore.

At present he was standing in the summer house which terminated the
blossoming tunnel of the rose arbour, watching water falling into a
stone basin from the fishy mouth of a wall fountain, and wondering
where Thessalie and Westmore had gone.

Dulcie, in a thin white frock and leghorn hat, roaming entranced and
at hazard over lawn and through shrubbery and garden, encountered him
there, still squinting abstractedly at the water spout.

It was the first time the girl had seen him since their arrival at
Foreland Farms. And now, as she paused under the canopy of fragrant
rain-drenched roses and looked at this man who had made all this
possible for her, she suddenly felt the change within herself, fitting
her for it all--a subtle metamorphosis completing itself within
her--the final accomplishment of a transmutation, deep, radical,
permanent.

For her, the stark, starved visage which Life had worn had relaxed; in
the grim, forbidding wall which had closed her horizon, a door opened,
showing a corner of a world where she knew, somehow, she belonged.

And in her heart, too, a door seemed to open, and her youthful soul
stepped out of it, naked, fearless, quite certain of itself and, for
the first time during their brief and earthly partnership, quite
certain of the body wherein it dwelt.

He was thinking of Thessalie when Dulcie came up and stood beside
him, looking down into the water where a few goldfish swam.

"Well, Sweetness," he said, brightening, "you look very wonderful in
white, with that big hat on your very enchanting red hair."

"I feel both wonderful and enchanted," she said, lifting her eyes. "I
shall live in the country some day."

"Really?" he said smiling.

"Yes, when I earn enough money. Do you remember the crazy way
Strindberg rolls around? Well, I feel like doing it on that lawn."

"Go ahead and do it," he urged. But she only laughed and chased the
goldfish around the basin with gentle fingers.

"Dulcie," he said, "you're unfolding, you're blossoming, you're
developing feminine snap and go and pep and je-ne-sais-quoi."

"You're teasing. But I believe I'm very feminine--and mature--though
you don't think so."

"Well, I don't think you're exactly at an age called well-preserved,"
he said, laughing. He took her hands and drew her up to confront him.
"Y