ood, and her big eyes grew anxious as she noted his lack of
appetite.

As a matter of fact Owen felt disinclined for food, for anything but
solitude and rest. His head was aching, and his arm was beginning to
pain him so severely that he feared sleep would be out of the question.

After dinner he yielded to the joint entreaties of Toni and Barry and
went to bed; leaving his wife to entertain his guest until the car
should come round to take him to the station.

The evening had closed in with rain, and the two sat by one of the
widely-opened windows in the drawing-room, looking out into the dusky
garden, and listening to the soft patter of the rain on the foliage
bordering the lawn. There was no wind, and against the cloudy sky the
tall trees stood like black giants holding out immovable arms, while
from the flowers, refreshed by the shower after their hot, thirsty day,
a grateful fragrance rose to sweeten the damp, cool air.

For some time Barry and his hostess sat in silence. Toni had taken her
favourite low chair, and her hands lay idly in her lap, the wedding-ring
which was their sole ornament gleaming in the lamplight. To Barry's eyes
her youthful prettiness had a slightly dimmed effect. Without losing
anything of its virginal purity of outline there was a hint of
weariness, of almost jaded fatigue, which startled Barry. He thought
always of Toni as some joyous woodland nymph, a pagan it might be, a
hedonist by nature and training; and while he had regretted, formerly,
her lack of worldly and womanly experience, it gave him something of a
pang at heart to find that this little pagan creature, this pretty,
wild, untutored Undine could apparently lose, for the moment at least,
her joy in the "sweet things" of life. That in the process she might be
slowly and painfully realizing her soul he did not stop to think. To him
the fatigue in her face was pathetic; to Herrick it would have been
enlightening.

"Mr. Raymond----" Toni spoke at last, and he threw off his absorption to
listen. "If Owen's arm is broken, how will he do his work?"

"That is just what I've been wondering," said Barry. "Of course the
ordinary office work, the work of the _Bridge_, will go on all right
without him for a bit. I mean--well, you see I can look after things
pretty well, and we have an excellent secretary in Miss Loder."

"But his own work? He is writing a book--a novel, isn't he? He said
something about it--though he hasn't read any o