his way to his room, stopped for a moment or two, to shout
at them, "I say, the mater and Mary've come up from Devon. I got a wire
this afternoon. I'm not grubbing with you to-night. They want to go to a
theatre, and I've got to climb into gaudy garments and go with them...."

He closed the door and ran up the stairs, but before he reached the
first landing, Gilbert called after him, "I say, Ninian!"

"Yes," he answered, pausing on the stairs.

"Bring them to dinner to-morrow night. Roger's Cousin Rachel is coming,
and we may as well make a party of it. Gaudy garments and liqueurs. Do
you think they'll stay for the first night of my play?"

"That's one of the reasons why they've come up," Ninian answered.

2

Rachel Wynne and Mrs. Graham and Mary dined with them on the following
evening, and it seemed to Henry when he saw Mary entering Ninian's
sitting-room that she was a stranger to him. He had known her as a child
and as a young, self-conscious girl, but this Mary was a woman. He felt
shy in her presence, and when, for a few moments, he was left alone with
her, he hardly knew what to say to her. They had been "Quinny" and
"Mary" to each other before, but now they avoided names.... He spoke
tritely about her journey to London, reminding her of the slowness of
the train between Whitcombe and Salisbury, and wondered whether she
liked London better than Boveyhayne. His old disability to say the
things that were in his mind prevented him from re-establishing his
intimacy with her. He tried to say, "Hilloa, Mary!" but could not do so,
and his shyness affected her so that she stood before him, fingering her
fan nervously, and answering "Yes" and "Oh, yes!" and "No" and "Oh, no!"
to all that he said. He liked the sweep of her hair across her brow and
the soft flush in her cheeks and the slender lines of her neck and the
gleam of a gold chain that held a pendant suspended about her throat. He
thought, too, that her eyes shone like lustres in the light, and
suddenly, as he thought this, he felt that he could speak to her with
his old freedom. He moved towards her, shaping his lips to say, "Oh,
Mary, I ..." but the door opened before he could speak, and Rachel Wynne
entered the room with Roger and Mrs. Graham.

"Yes, Quinny?" Mary said, saying his name quite easily now.

He laughed nervously and looked at the others. "I've forgotten what I
was going to say," he said, and went forward to greet Mrs. Graham.

"My cousin