all-room and passed out through that.

The great oval mound of flowers spread its odoriferous carpet before the
steps leading down from the house. She turned her back upon it and
followed a path bordered with pansies and ivy till Gerald saw her and
came to take her hand, saying:

"How good of you!"

"Well," she sighed, put by the bliss of her relief into a mood of
splendid carelessness as to how she, for her part, should carry off the
situation,--looking after her dignity and all that. "How jolly this is!
And you're all right again, Gerald. You're well enough to walk on your
legs and come and tell me so. Yes, you're looking quite yourself again.
Well,"--she sighed again heartily,--"it's good for sore eyes to see you.
You're sure now it's all right for you to be out of doors after sunset?
Hadn't we better go in?"

"This air is like a warm bath. I must not keep you long, anyhow."

"Oh, I haven't got a thing to do," she precipitately assured him. "Come,
we'll walk up and down the path,--hadn't we better?--so as not to be
standing still. Go ahead, now; tell me all about yourself. How do you
feel? Have you got entirely rid of your cough? And the stitch in your
side?"

He would only speak to answer, she soon found; the moment she stopped
talking silence fell. Had he nothing to say to her, then? Or did he find
it difficult somehow to talk? She was so determined to make the
atmosphere cozy, friendly, happy--make the atmosphere as it had used to
be between them--so determined, that she jabbered on like a magpie, like
a mill, about this, that, and the other, sprinkling in little jokes in
her own manner, and little stories in her own taste, accompanied by her
rich--on this occasion slightly nervous gurgle.

"Aurora dear," he said at last, with an effect of mournful patience as
much as of protest, "what makes you? I am here to beg your forgiveness,
and you put me off with what Mrs. Moriarty said to Mrs. O'Flynn. Do you
call it kind?"

A knot tied itself in Aurora's throat, which she could not loosen so as
to go on. If she had tried to speak she would have betrayed the fact
that those simple words had, like a pump, fetched the tears up from her
heart into her throat. He had his chance now to do all the talking.

"Couldn't we sit down somewhere for a minute? Should you mind?" His
gesture vaguely designated the green inclosure, where the stone table
stood, pale among the dark laurels.

But when they were seated, he only pr