But don't come away if you'd rather stop on."

Their eyes locked for an instant.

"Is that likely?" he asked, a gleam in his own.

"I don't know."

"You do know. Look sharp and get your things on."

Michael Maurice did not hurry himself over the congenial task of
settling his _deesse veritable_ among the cushions of her dandy,--a
hybrid conveyance, half canoe, half cane lounge, slung from the
shoulders of four men, by an ingenious arrangement of straps and cross
poles. Closer acquaintance had deepened his admiration: but a nameless
something in her manner warned him that it must not be expressed in his
usual promiscuous fashion. She had refused, very sweetly but
decisively, the honour of appearing in his great picture. But Desmond
had succumbed to the temptation of procuring a portrait of her and
'little Paul.' "At the worst, I can sell a pony to pay for it," he had
said, in answer to her remonstrance. "And I shall think it cheap at
the price!"

And now, as the dandy-bearers turned to mount the ascent, he came to
his wife's side. She had drawn off her gloves, and one hand rested on
the woodwork of her canoe. He covered it with his own, walking by her
thus, for a few steps, in silence: and it was enough.

"Mount now," she commanded him softly. "And let's hurry home, I've
ever so much to tell you."

He obeyed: and they journeyed upward to familiar music of hoof-beats,
and the murmur of _jhampannies_, wrapt about by the magic of a night so
still that all the winds seemed to have gone round with the sun to the
other side of the world.

A tray set with glass and silver awaited them in the drawing-room.

Honor, entering first, slipped the long cloak from her shoulders with a
satisfied sigh, a sense of passing from the unreal to the real, which
she often experienced on returning from a dance: and underlying all, a
profound pity for the lone and ill-mated women, in a world of oddments
and misfits, who have never felt the thrill of such home-comings as
this of hers to-night. Then she swept round, and fronted her
husband:--a gleaming figure, like a statue cut in ivory; no colour
anywhere, save the living tints of her face and eyes and hair.

"Well?" she laughed, on a low clear note of happiness. "I hope you are
properly ashamed of yourself!"

But before the words were out, he had her in his arms; and for a
supreme moment the great illusion was theirs that they were not two,
but one, as the Book decrees.