destiny. She straightened her shoulders. With all her innocence and
ignorance and impulsiveness and weakness, she had behind her the unique
and priceless force of her youth. She was young, and she put her trust
in life.

CHAPTER III
FLORRIE AGAIN

I

As they were walking home along the King's Road, Hilda suddenly stopped
in front of a chemist's shop. "I've got something to buy here," she said
diffidently, and then added: "I'll follow you."

"And what have you got to buy?" he asked, facing her, with his
benevolent, ironical expression.

"Never mind!" she gently laughed. "I shan't be many minutes after you."
She pretended to make a mystery. But her sole purpose was to avoid
re-entering the house in his company; and she knew that he had divined
this. Nevertheless, she found pleasure in the perfectly futile pretence
of a mysterious purchase.

She was very self-conscious as they stood there on the dusty footpath
amid the promenaders gay and gloomy, chattering and silent, who were
taking the sun and the salt breeze. Despite her reason, she had a fear
that numbers of people would perceive her to be newly affianced and
remark upon the contrast between her girlishness and his maturity. But
George Cannon was not in the slightest degree self-conscious. He played
the lover with ease and said quite simply and convincingly just the
things which she would have expected a lover to say. Indeed, the
conversation, as carried on by him, between the moment of betrothal and
the arrival at the chemist's shop, was the one phenomenon of the
engagement which corresponded with her preconceived ideas concerning
such an affair. It convinced her that she really was affianced.

"Well?" he murmured fondly and yet quizzically, as they remained
wordless, deliciously hesitating to part. "What are you thinking about?"

She replied with brave candour, appealing to him by a soft glance:

"I was only thinking how queer it is I should be engaged in a room I'd
never seen before in my life--going into it like that!"

He looked at her uncomprehending; for an instant his features were
blank; then he smiled kindly.

"It's so strange!" she encouraged him.

"Yes. Isn't it?" he agreed, with charming, tranquil politeness.

"He doesn't see it!" she thought, as she watched the play of his face.
"He doesn't see how wonderful it is that I should go into a room that
was absolutely unknown to me and then this should happen at once. Why! I
never kn