rs of constant motion, and never an hour's peace; three years
of agitated waters, and never in all that time three days alone
together. What was there to show for the three years? That for which he
had longed with a great longing had been denied him; for he had come of
a large family, and had the simple primitive mind and heart. Even in
his faults he had ever been primitively simple and obvious. She had
been energetic, helping great charities, aiding in philanthropic
enterprises, with more than a little shrewdness preventing him from
being robbed right and left by adventurers of all descriptions; and
yet--and yet it was all so general, so soulless, her activity in good
causes. Was there a single afflicted person, one forlorn soul whom she
had directly and personally helped, or sheltered from the storm for a
moment, one bereaved being whose eyes she had dried by her own direct
personal sympathy?

Was it this which had been more or less vaguely working in his mind a
little while before when she had noticed a change in him; or was it
that he was disappointed that they were two and no more--always two,
and no more? Was it that which was working in his mind, and making him
say hard things about their own two commendable selves?

"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand
lovers.... And now you come down through the centuries purified by
Time, to be my jasmine-flower"--

She did not break the silence for some time, but at last she said: "And
what were you a thousand years ago, my man?"

He drew a hot hand across a troubled brow. "I? I was the Satrap whose
fury you soothed away, or I was the Antony you lured from fighting
Caesar."

It was as though he had read those lines written by Ian Stafford long
ago.

Again that perfume of hers caught his senses, and his look softened
wonderfully. A certain unconscious but underlying discontent appeared
to vanish from his eyes, and he said, abruptly: "I have it--I have it.
This dress is like the one you wore the first night that we met. It's
the same kind of stuff, it's just the same colour and the same style.
Why, I see it all as plain as can be--there at the opera. And you wore
blue the day I tried to propose to you and couldn't, and asked you down
to Wales instead. Lord, how I funked it!" He laughed, happily almost.
"Yes, you wore blue the first time we met--like this."

"It was the same skirt, and a different bodice, of course both those
first times,