way he knew
that. Yet she was calling to him, calling to him with all she
possessed, calling to him as to her master.

He succeeded in persuading her to eat and drink, and she departed, a
little grim and unpleased, in the motor car which Mr. Foley had
insisted upon ordering round. Then Maraton strolled into the garden to
take his delayed coffee. Elisabeth came noiselessly across the turf to
his side.

"I hope there was nothing disturbing in your letters?" she said.

"Not very," he replied. "It is only what I expected."

"Every one," she continued, "has been admiring your secretary. We all
thought that she had such a beautiful face."

"She is not my secretary," he explained. "She came in place of her
brother, who met with a slight accident just as he was starting."

Somehow or other, he fancied that Elisabeth was pleased.

"I didn't think that it was like you to have a woman secretary," she
remarked.

He smiled as he replied:

"Miss Thurnbrein is a very earnest worker and a real humanitarian. She
has written articles about woman labour in London."

"Julia Thurnbrein!" Elisabeth exclaimed. "Yes, I have read them. If
only I had known that that was she! I should have liked so much to have
talked to her. Do you think that she would come and see me, or let me
come and see her? We really do want to understand these things, and it
seems to me, somehow, that people like Julia Thurnbrein, and all those
who really understand, keep away from us wilfully. They won't exchange
thoughts. They believe that we are their natural enemies. And we
aren't, you know. There isn't any one I'd like to meet and talk with so
much as Julia Thurnbrein."

He nodded sympathetically.

"They are prejudiced," he admitted. "All of them are disgusted with me
for being down here. They look with grave suspicion upon my ability to
wear a dress suit. It is just that narrowness which has set back the
clock a hundred years. . . . How I like your idea of an open-air
drawing-room! Mr. Foley hasn't been looking for me, has he? I am due
in his study in three minutes."

Her finger touched his arm.

"Come with me for one moment," she insisted, a little abruptly.

She led him down one of the walks--a narrow turf path, leading through
great clumps of rhododendrons. At the bottom was the wood where the
nightingale had his home. After a few paces she stopped.

"Mr. Maraton," she said, "this may be our last serious word together,
for when you have talk