s Loder was clever
enough to realize that in Owen she had met her intellectual master; and
being at heart a veritable woman she never attempted to challenge the
supremacy of the masculine mind.

The work progressed quickly; and gradually, as the fascination of his
work grew upon him, Owen became more and more absorbed in his book. He
was always planning some incident, rehearsing, mentally, some situation
or some telling dialogue; and the outer life around him receded into a
dim and misty distance, in which Toni's pathetic little figure was
almost lost.

Toni did not give in easily. She made feeble tentative attempts to share
his author's rapture. She asked him timid little questions, to which he
gave smilingly vague answers; and once she even suggested that he should
read to her the chapters he had already finished.

Owen refused, quite gently, but inexorably; and Toni felt a miserable
certainty that he did not think her capable of understanding or
appreciating his work.

The day this happened she ordered the car and went for a long and
solitary excursion into the country. Of late she had not used the car,
preferring to hang wretchedly about the house and garden, half-resenting
the absorption of the two workers shut up in the library, not daring to
interrupt their toil, yet longing, vaguely, for the courage to enter
boldly and claim her share of the mutual labour.

But to-day she felt that she could stand the house no longer. A great
desire was upon her for the sunny places of the earth, and in her
present mood the slow, gliding traffic of the river held for her no
attraction. She longed for the swift, exhilarating rush through the air
which, the car would give her; and Fletcher took her orders with
alacrity.

"A long round--yes, ma'am." He deliberated. "It's not three yet, and I
suppose you don't care to be 'ome much before dinner-time?"

"No, I want to be out for hours," she said feverishly, and Fletcher was
only too pleased to oblige her.

Even Toni's depression could not hold beneath the tonic of that glorious
ride. It was a splendid September day, when the country lay bathed in
floods of rolling sunshine, and there was just enough bite in the air to
set the blood racing through one's veins, and bring the sparkle to one's
eyes.

Toni sat upright in the car, gazing out over the golden fields to the
misty hills beyond, and everything she saw filled her with the true and
vivid happiness which the lover of t