often?"

Juliet looked up quickly. "So that you may see her?" she asked
straightforwardly.

"Yes. I won't pretend it's anything else. I can tell you honestly that if
there were no other reason I should want to come because of my old
friendship for you and Anthony, and because this evening in your little
home has given me a rare pleasure. I know of no place like it. But I'll
tell you squarely that I want the chance to meet your friend often and at
once. If I don't you will have other people coming out from town----"

"Yes," said Juliet, and something in the way she said it made him ask
quickly: "Has that already happened? Am I too late?"

"I don't know whether you're too late, but I know that we've suddenly
grown most attractive to another man from town. If you had gone into
Rachel's home the odour of violets would have met you at the door. He
sends them every few days."

"_Ah!_" said the doctor. It was not much of a comment, but it spoke
volumes. He had been keen before--he was determined now. Violets--well,
there were rarer flowers than those.

XIII.--SMOKE AND TALK

At the house there remained for the guests an hour before the fire, where
Juliet brought in something hot and sweet and sour and spicy, which tasted
delicious and brought her a shower of compliments while they drank a
friendly draught to her. When she had left them, standing in an admiring
group on the hearth-rug and wishing her happy dreams, they settled into
luxurious positions of ease before the fire--a fire in the last stages of
red comfort before it dies into a smoulder of torrid ashes.

"Anthony Robeson," said Wayne Carey, regarding the andirons fixedly over
his bed-time pipe, "you're a happy man."

Anthony laughed contentedly. He had thrown himself down upon the
hearth-rug with his head on a pillow pulled from the settle, and lay flat
on his back with his hands clasped behind his neck. It was an attitude
deeply expressive of masculine comfort.

"You're exactly right," said he. "And you would be the same if you would
give up living in that infernal boarding-house. What do you want to fool
with your first year of married life like that for? You told me that
Judith was bowled over by our wedding, and was ready to go in for this
sort of thing with a will."

"I know it," admitted Carey, "but"--he spoke hesitatingly--"we couldn't
seem to find this sort of thing. You had corralled all there was."

"Nonsense."

"You had. Everything w