nd lean against his knee. He had a beautiful way of
stroking my hair or my hand as he talked. He trusted me. He told me of
great things even before he had talked of them to men. He knew I would
never speak of what was said between us in his room. That was part of
his trust. He said once that it was a part of the evolution of race,
that men had begun to expect of women what in past ages they really only
expected of each other."

Mount Dunstan hesitated before speaking.

"You mean--absolute faith--apart from affection?"

"Yes. The power to be quite silent, even when one is tempted to
speak--if to speak might betray what it is wiser to keep to one's self
because it is another man's affair. The kind of thing which is good
faith among business men. It applies to small things as much as to
large, and to other things than business."

Mount Dunstan, recalling his own childhood and his own father, felt
again the pressure of the remote mental suggestion that she had had
too much, a childhood and girlhood like this, the affection and
companionship of a man of large and ordered intelligence, of clear and
judicial outlook upon an immense area of life and experience. There was
no cause for wonder that her young womanhood was all it presented to
himself, as well as to others. Recognising the shadow of resentment in
his thought, he swept it away, an inward sense making it clear to him
that if their positions had been reversed, she would have been more
generous than himself.

He pulled himself together with an unconscious movement of his
shoulders. Here was the day of early June, the gold of the sun in
its morning, the green shadows, the turf they walked on together, the
skylark rising again from the meadow and showering down its song. Why
think of anything else. What a line that was which swept from her chin
down her long slim throat to its hollow! The colour between the velvet
of her close-set lashes--the remembrance of her curious splendid
blush--made the man's lost and unlived youth come back to him. What
did it matter whether she was American or English--what did it matter
whether she was insolently rich or beggarly poor? He would let himself
go and forget all but the pleasure of the sight and hearing of her.

So as they went they found themselves laughing together and talking
without restraint. They went through the flower and kitchen gardens;
they saw the once fallen wall rebuilt now with the old brick; they
visited the gr