last to take another cautious
peep at his surroundings, he found himself, with what astonishment!
confronted by Anne's faint, amused, malicious smile. She was standing
before him,--the woman who was a tree,--the swaying grace of her
movement arrested in a pose that seemed itself a movement.

"How long have you been standing there?" he asked, when he had done
gaping at her.

"Oh, about half an hour, I suppose," she said airily. "You were so very
deep in your paper--head over ears--I didn't like to disturb you."

"You look lovely this morning," Denis exclaimed. It was the first time
he had ever had the courage to utter a personal remark of the kind.

Anne held up her hand as though to ward off a blow. "Don't bludgeon me,
please." She sat down on the bench beside him. He was a nice boy, she
thought, quite charming; and Gombauld's violent insistences were really
becoming rather tiresome. "Why don't you wear white trousers?" she
asked. "I like you so much in white trousers."

"They're at the wash," Denis replied rather curtly. This white-trouser
business was all in the wrong spirit. He was just preparing a scheme
to manoeuvre the conversation back to the proper path, when Mr. Scogan
suddenly darted out of the house, crossed the terrace with clockwork
rapidity, and came to a halt in front of the bench on which they were
seated.

"To go on with our interesting conversation about the cosmos," he began,
"I become more and more convinced that the various parts of the concern
are fundamentally discrete...But would you mind, Denis, moving a shade
to your right?" He wedged himself between them on the bench. "And if
you would shift a few inches to the left, my dear Anne...Thank you.
Discrete, I think, was what I was saying."

"You were," said Anne. Denis was speechless.

They were taking their after luncheon coffee in the library when the
telegram arrived. Denis blushed guiltily as he took the orange envelope
from the salver and tore it open. "Return at once. Urgent family
business." It was too ridiculous. As if he had any family business!
Wouldn't it be best just to crumple the thing up and put it in his
pocket without saying anything about it? He looked up; Mary's large blue
china eyes were fixed upon him, seriously, penetratingly. He blushed
more deeply than ever, hesitated in a horrible uncertainty.

"What's your telegram about?" Mary asked significantly.

He lost his head, "I'm afraid," he mumbled, "I'm afraid this me