g me up, my young friend. I quite expected to hear your
news during the day. No one would really suppose that a respectable
man like Starling would be guilty of such a ridiculous action.
However, it is pleasant to know. I thank you. I take my coffee and
rolls this morning with more appetite."

Arnold set down the telephone. Mr. Weatherley, had risen to his feet
and walked as far as the window. On his way back to his place, he
looked at the little safe which he had made over to his secretary.

"You've got my papers there all right, Chetwode?" he asked.

"Certainly, sir," Arnold answered. "I hope, however, we may never
need to use them."

Mr. Weatherley smiled. He was busy choosing another cigar.

CHAPTER XIX

IN THE COUNTRY

They sat on the edge of the wood, and a west wind made music for
them overhead among the fir trees. From their feet a clover field
sloped steeply to a honeysuckle-wreathed hedge. Beyond that,
meadow-land, riven by the curving stream which stretched like a
thread of silver to the blue, hazy distance. Arnold laughed softly
with the pleasure of it, but the wonder kept Ruth tongue-tied.

"I feel," she murmured, "as though I were in a theatre for the first
time. Everything is strange."

"It is the theatre of nature," Arnold replied. "If you close your
eyes and listen, you can hear the orchestra. There is a lark singing
above my head, and a thrush somewhere back in the wood there."

"And see, in the distance there are houses," Ruth continued softly.
"Just fancy, Arnold, people, if they had no work to do, could live
here, could live always out of sight of the hideous, smoky city, out
of hearing of its thousand discords."

He smiled.

"There are a great many who feel like that," he said, his eyes fixed
upon the horizon, "and then, as the days go by, they find that
there is something missing. The city of a thousand discords
generally has one clear cry, Ruth."

"For you, perhaps," she answered, "because you are young and because
you are ambitious. But for me who lie on my back all day long, think
of the glory of this!"

Arnold slowly sat up.

"Upon my word!" he exclaimed. "Why not. Why shouldn't you stay in
the country for the summer? I hate London, too. There are cheap
tickets, and bicycles, and all sorts of things. I wonder whether we
couldn't manage it."

She said nothing. His thoughts were busy with the practical side of
it. There was an opportunity here, too, to prepare her f