an squabble over our laurels at leisure!

"Theo sends sympathy and _salaams_, and I think you know that I am very
really 'yours,'

"HONOR M. DESMOND."

Quita smiled as she folded up the note, though her lashes were wet with
more than mist. Tears came too readily to her eyes just now, a fact
that engendered occasional bickerings between herself and Michael.

"And to think that I was blind enough to hate that dear woman," she
thought. "I, who pride myself on my intuition!"

Then she scribbled a hasty note of acceptance, despatched the
_jhampanni_, and remained standing absently by the verandah rail,
looking out into nothingness; trying to grasp the fact that the
longest, hardest three weeks of her life were over; that in less than
four hours' time she would once more set eyes on the man who was, to
all intents and purposes, her newly accepted lover; would verify in the
flesh the remembrance of that wonderful night and morning.

The thought so unsteadied her, that she clenched her hands, and jerked
herself together. Having more of Diana than of Venus in her
composition, the intensity of her love--since avowal had levelled all
barriers--was a constant surprise to her; and now she was even a little
ashamed of her natural longing for the touch of hands and lips, that
she had at times been disposed to scorn. None the less, she hoped,
unblushingly, that she would be allowed to have him to herself for an
hour, or so; hoped also--nay, confidently expected--that she would end
in overruling this stern purpose of his, that irritated her, even while
it compelled her admiration.

To her, as to all eager natures, the appeal of the present was
all-powerful, the more so when that present offered her with both hands
the best that life has to give. To sacrifice it on the altar of a
problematical future seemed sheer folly; magnificent folly, perhaps,
but, in the circumstances her quickened heart leaned towards a less
magnificent wisdom. She detected in this unmanageable husband of hers
a strain of unpretentious heroism, which delighted her in the abstract.
But when the heroic puts on flesh and blood, and shoulders itself into
our narrow lives, it is apt to appear a little too big for the stage;
and Quita had an artist's eye for proportion, whether in pictures or in
the human comedy.

Moreover, a mingling of French and Irish blood rarely results in an
irksome development of the conscience, or of that moral bugbear, a
sense