ed him promptly. "I shouldn't
like you to be in the least bit different from what you are. It wouldn't
be my Garth, then, at all."

So they would sit together and talk the foolish, charming nonsense
that all lovers have talked since the days of Adam and Eve, whilst
from above, the sun shone down and blessed them, and the waves, lapping
peacefully on the shore, murmured an _obbligato_ to their love-making.

Looking backward, in the bitter months that followed when her individual
happiness had been caught away from her in a whirlwind of calamity, and
when the whole world was reeling under the red storm of war, Sara could
always remember the utter, satisfying peace of those golden days of
early July--an innocent, unthinking peace that neither she nor the
world would ever quite regain. Afterwards, memory would always have her
scarred and bitter place at the back of things.

Sara found no hardship now in receiving the congratulations of her
friends--and they fell about her like rain--while in the long, intimate
talks she had with Garth the fact that he would never speak of the
past weighed with her not at all. She guessed that long ago he had been
guilty of some mad, boyish escapade which, with his exaggerated sense
of honour and the delicate idealism that she had learned to know as an
intrinsic part of his temperamental make-up, he had magnified into a
cardinal sin. And she was content to leave it at that and to accept the
present, gathering up with both hands the happiness it held.

She had written to Elisabeth, telling her of her engagement, and, to her
surprise, had received the most charming and friendly letter in return.

"Of course," wrote Elisabeth in her impulsive, flowing hand with its
heavy dashes and fly-away dots, "we cannot but wish that it had been
otherwise--that you could have learned to care for Tim--but you know
better than any one of us where your happiness lies, and you are right
to take it. And never think, Sara, that this is going to make any
difference to our friendship. I could read between the lines of your
letter that you had some such foolish thought in your mind. So little do
I mean this to make any break between us that--as I can quite realize
it would be too much to ask that you should come to us at Barrow just
now--I propose coming down to Monkshaven. I want to meet the lucky
individual who has won my Sara. I have not been too well lately--the
heat has tried me--and Geoffrey is anxious tha