epudiated the idea emphatically. "Jimmy is not that
sort. I think he proposed because he's been very miserable over
something, and Vera took his thoughts off his other troubles. But he
won't be happy."

There was no mistaking the conviction in her voice, and, for a moment,
even her husband was moved out of his usual good-humoured complacency;
but he soon recovered and tried to laugh away her fears, without,
however, achieving much success. She was not in a mood to be reassured,
although she contrived to put on a smiling face when she met the newly
engaged pair at dinner.

Vera was a little inclined to blush, but obviously happy. Jimmy, on the
other hand, was by turns silent, almost moody, and then feverishly
talkative. Vera seemed to notice nothing amiss--possibly she put it down
to natural excitement--but Ethel watched him with anxiety, which she
tried hard to conceal. As she said, the whole thing was her doing. She
had engineered it carefully, and she was, at least in matters like
these, a clever woman. True, once or twice, she felt a slight misgiving,
but she had made up her mind to succeed, and had brushed her fears
aside. Only when Jimmy came with the news that her scheme had become an
accomplished fact did she realise that match-making is a dangerous
occupation. He neither looked nor spoke like a lover who had just been
accepted, but rather like a man who sees the crisis of his life a little
way ahead of him, and is fearful of his own capacity to pass through it.

Vera was quite satisfied with Jimmy's farewell kiss. Had there been
passion in it she might have been frightened; but, as it was, the caress
he gave her seemed very sweet. She was very proud of this lover of hers,
of his undoubted cleverness, his good looks, and his powers of
conversation. It would be very pleasant to see his name on all the
bookstalls, to know that almost every other girl of her acquaintance
would envy her the possession of her author. So far, she had hardly
thought of marriage and its responsibilities; all that part seemed a
long way off, in the distant future, and, for the moment, she thought
only of the engagement. But as Jimmy walked home in the moonlight, Vera
Farlow was hardly in his mind at all; he was thinking of other kisses he
had given and received, and, try as he would, he could not drive out a
horrible feeling that, every time his lips touched Vera's, he was being
unfaithful to Lalage. It was absurd, wholly ridiculous, he