ly assure you it wouldn't be
here. It would be in the orchard if anywhere. There is the loveliest
cherry-tree there, with a seat all round it."

"How jolly! I'd like to see it. Will you give me the key?"

"Who told you it was kept locked?"

She looked rather annoyed.

"You did, but not intentionally."

"I don't see that you have really any right to suppose----Why
shouldn't I go in my own orchard, at any hour I like?"

"But, Val--of course you ought to go in your own orchard. But why don't
you meet Romer there?"

"Oh, Gillie, really!..."

"He is so straight, so good-looking, and, under all that manner, he's
exactly like Vesuvius. Yes. Fancy, you're living with a volcano and you
don't appreciate it!"

"Gillie, it's really rather stupid of you to put things like that. It
isn't a question of liking either one person _or_ another. If Romer were
ill, or anything like that, don't you _know_----"

"I know you'd devote yourself to him, like a sister or a mother. You'd
put Harry aside for a time as a pleasure that mustn't be indulged in.
Now that's just where you're wrong. No! _I_ want to see you being ever
so good and kind to dear Harry as a duty to a ne'er-do-well of a cousin;
and regarding Romer----"

She did not answer.

"My point is," he went on, "that it's really too distressingly
conventional of you to suppose that because you happen to be legally
married there can be no sort of romance. Only comradeship, or perhaps
affectionate sentiment? That's what you believe."

"Isn't it always so?"

"Most often, I grant. That's generally through the man's point of view.
But Romer is an exception. He's as much in love as if he had no hope of
ever being within a mile of you."

She seemed rather flattered. "Do you really think so? But even that
isn't everything."

"Oh, there's a great deal to be done with Romer," was Vaughan's reply.

He spoke with dreamy significance, and she was silent. Then she
exclaimed, turning round suddenly--

"I suppose what you really mean is that Harry doesn't care a bit about
me?"

"No, I don't. But he cares a bit about a lot of people, and things. He's
superficial, and he has no courage."

"No courage? _Harry!_"

"He'd crumble up in a crisis if a strong man took him in hand."

"That's all nonsense." She was growing angry. "Hasn't he been up in an
aeroplane, and done--oh, all sorts of things? I call Harry daring and
brave!"

"That's all vanity. All that is show and vanity. Oh,