so
widely from the women of his set. Perhaps the weaker sex are made
variously that the mind of desultory man, studious of change, and
pleased with novelty, may be indulged.

"How long have we known each other?" he asks.

"About three hours," she answers promptly.

"How deep can one go below the surface in one hundred and eighty
minutes?"

Eleanor seems bewildered; she is at a loss for words.

"Have I only been with you so short a time?" he says incredulously.
"Can it be possible?"

"Does it seem long?" she asks looking down shyly. "Have I wearied you,
Mr. Roche?"

His smile reassures her.

"It does not seem _long_, only _full_ to the brim. To every second a
fresh thought, an inch deeper into the unknown."

"I have never met anyone before," she declares frankly, "who spoke to
me like that."

Then with a swift "Good night" Eleanor breaks away and vanishes among
the shadows.

"A wife," says Philip to himself, "is something between a hindrance and
a help. Is this the turn of the tide?"

A nightingale broke into song. "Yes!" it cried; "yes--yes--yes!"

CHAPTER II.

"IMPARADIS'D IN ONE ANOTHER'S ARMS."--_Milton_.

Eleanor is busy in the morning sunlight, brightening the pewter dinner
service, the pride of the Grebby family, passed down from generation to
generation, and priceless in her eyes. She can hear the preparations
without for an early start to the neighbouring market. Her mother is
loading a cart of vegetables, while her father "shoos" the cackling
geese into wicker pens, and harnesses "Black Bess" the steady old mare,
who is almost one of themselves. And Eleanor is glad that the market
(a weekly centre of attraction to the old village) will leave her in
peaceful solitude.

She breaks out into a glad song, which mingles with the twittering of
birds:

"There was a jolly miller once,
Lived on the River Dee."

"Eleanor, Eleanor, give me a hand with these vegetables," cries her
mother's voice. There is a thud, and a whole sack of potatoes fall
pell-mell into the yard, still muddy from yesterday's rain.

Eleanor gathers them up, indulging the same tuneful mood:

"He worked and sang from morn till night.
No lark more blithe than he!"

She has a strong, sweet-toned voice, and "Black Bess" turns her head
sleepily at the sound, whisking the tiresome flies with her tail. So
often Eleanor's tread at the door of her shed has meant apples and
carrots and sugar.

She wip