me has asked me to sit to him. Just a sketch in the
garden--for a picture he's at work on. You would like me to accept?"

She stood before him, her eyes raised, with the frank gentleness of a
child. Yet there was a condition implied in the question.

Tatham broke out--passionately,

"Just tell me. There's--there's no one else?"

She suffered for him; she hastened to comfort him.

"No, no--indeed there's no one else. Though, mind, I'm free. And so are
you. Shall I come to-morrow?" she asked again, with quiet insistence.

There was a gulp in Tatham's throat. Yet he rose--dismally--to her
challenge.

"You would do what I like?" he asked, quivering.

"Indeed I would."

"I invited Delorme here--just to please you--and because I hoped he'd
paint you."

"Then that's settled!" she said, with a little sigh of satisfaction.

"And what, please, am I to do--that _you'd_ like?" She looked up
mischievously.

"Call me Lydia--forget that you ever wanted to marry me--and don't mind a
rap what people say!"

He laughed, through his pain, and gravely took her hand.

"And now," said Lydia, "I think it's time to go home."

* * * * *

When all the guests were gone, when Gerald and Delorme had smoked their
last interminable cigars, and Delorme had made his last mocking comments
on the "old masters" who adorned the smoking-room, Tatham saw him safely
to bed, and returned to his sitting-room on the ground floor. The French
window was open, and he passed out into the garden. Soon, in his struggle
with himself, he had left the garden and the park behind, and was
climbing the slope of the fells. The play of the soft summer winds under
the stars, the scents of bracken and heather and rushes, the distant
throbbing sounds that rose from the woods as the wind travelled through
them--and soon, the short mountain turf beneath his feet, and around and
below him, the great shapes of the hills, mysteriously still, and yet, as
it seemed to him, mysteriously alive--these things spoke to him and,
little by little, calmed his blood.

It was the first anguish of a happy man. When, presently, he lay safe
hidden in a hollow of the lonely fell, face downward among the moonlit
rocks, some young and furious tears fell upon the sod. That quiet
strength of will in so soft a creature--a will opposed to his will--had
brought him up against the unyieldingness of the world. The joyous
certainties of life were shaken to th