d way, "for then you won't
miss Mrs. West so much."

"Miss Mrs. West? Good Lord, I'd forgotten her!"

"That's very ungrateful and horrid of you, then," I scolded him,
"because you and she were friends, and she knows how to be perfectly
charming."

"Yes. She knows how."

"She knows just what to do and say."

"Yes. She's an agreeable--and experienced--woman."

"And if it hadn't been for me, she'd be sitting by you now."

"I have little doubt of that."

"And you would have been happy."

"I should have been contented. There's a big difference between
contentment and happiness. You can't have learned it, yet."

"Oh, can't I! It's all the difference between--between--well, the
difference between this borderland seen on a dark day and seen on a day
of sunshine. It's the same landscape, but it doesn't look the same to
the eyes or give the same feelings to the heart. The dark-day feelings
would be calm and quietly pleasant; the sunshine feelings would be full
of thrills and heartbeats--as to-day."

"By Jove, you've hit it!" he exclaimed as if to please me by agreeing.
"Full of thrills and heartbeats--as to-day."

"Then you _do_ feel the romance of everything in this sunshine?" I
asked, quick to drag a "yes" from him while he was in the mood.

"I should say I did. And I'm not ashamed, with you to back me up. But
I've a sneaking idea I should have been ashamed of it with Mrs. West.
And I shouldn't have felt the thrills, only a calm, peaceful pleasure,
as in the gray days--contentment. I shouldn't have known what I was
missing, perhaps. I should have respected myself for outgrowing my
enthusiasms. But--in my best moments, Princess, I've pitied people more
for not knowing what they miss in life than for missing the things."

"Yes," I answered, "because it's better to know there are beautiful
things, and to want them in vain, than grub along without knowing of
their existence. But all that's got nothing to do with Mrs. West."

"Perhaps not. Yet it has something to do with me. No need to bother
about the connection."

"I won't bother about anything!" I laughed in my joy of life and of
motoring, which seemed one and indivisible just then. "I'm wrapped up in
the magic golden web that Sir Walter Scott and Burns have woven round
every mile of this land across the border--_our_ land, yours and mine."

"So am I, caught in the web, lost in it--to my own surprise." He laughed
as he drove, his eyes alert and young. "Burns,