good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an enchantress; but--she
was decidedly mature. And here he was--involved in helping her to
"live"; involved almost alarmingly, for there had been no mistaking the
fact that she had really fallen in love with him.

This was flattering and sweet. Times were sad, and pleasure scarce,
but--! The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up,
rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however pleasant,
the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or, was it
that perhaps for the first time in his life he had been peeping into
fairyland of late, and this affair with Leila was by no means fairyland?
He had another reason, more unconscious, for uneasiness. His heart, for
all his wanderings, was soft, he had always found it difficult to hurt
anyone, especially anyone who did him the honour to love him. A sort of
presentiment weighed on him while he walked the moonlit streets at this
most empty hour, when even the late taxis had ceased to run. Would she
want him to marry her? Would it be his duty, if she did? And then he
found himself thinking of the concert, and that girl's face, listening
to the tales he was telling her. 'Deuced queer world,' he thought, 'the
way things go! I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew--and
that good padre! Phew!'

He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg, and
having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of time for
rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever, he began
at last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse. Take the goods the
gods send you and don't fuss!' And suddenly he remembered with extreme
vividness that night on the stoep at High Constantia, and thought with
dismay: 'I could have plunged in over head and ears then; and now--I
can't! That's life all over! Poor Leila! Me miserum, too, perhaps--who
knows!'

IV

When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling, and
her lips were soft. She seemed to smile and be soft all over, and she
took both his hands. Everything was a pleasure to her that day, even
the sight of this sad face. She was in love and was loved again; had a
present and a future once more, not only her own full past; and she must
finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was coming. She sat down
on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way, and said:

"Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble. Wha