ing on earth. More beautiful.
Have I ever set my cap so becomingly at any of you as I am setting
it now at her? Have you ever seen finer eyes than these that I make
at her, that I lavish on her out of the sheer exuberance of my
nature? Very well, then; doesn't that prove that you're wrong in all
things you've been thinking about me. _I_ know what you've been
thinking!"

As if she knew what he was thinking she made herself beautiful for
him. She allowed him presently to take her for a walk, for quite a
long walk. The woods of Amberley lured them, westward, across the
shining fields. They went, therefore, through the woods and back by
the village in the cool of the evening.

He had seldom, he might say he had never, seen Philippa in so
agreeable a mood. She had sunk her sex. She was tired of her
terrible game, the game that Straker saw through; she was playing
another one, a secret, innocent, delightful game. She laid herself
out to amuse Straker, instead of laying _him_ out (as he put it), on
the table, to amuse herself.

"Philippa," he said, "you've been adorable for the last half hour."

"For the last half hour I've been myself."

She smiled as if to herself, a secret, meditative smile. The mystery
of it was not lost on Straker.

"I can always be myself," she said, "when I'm with you."

"For half an hour," he murmured.

She went on. "You're not tiresome, like the others. I don't know
what there is about you, but you don't bore me."

"Perhaps not--for half an hour."

"Not for millions of half hours."

"Consecutive?"

"Oh, yes."

She tilted her head back and gazed at him with eyes narrowed and
slanting under their deep lids.

"Not in an immortality," she said.

She laughed aloud her joyous appreciation of him.

Straker was neither uplifted nor alarmed. He knew exactly where
he stood with her. She was not considering him; she was not
trying to get at him; she was aware of his illumination and his
disenchantment; she was also aware of his continuous interest in
her, and it was his continuous interest, the study that he made
of her, that interested Philippa. She was anxious that he should
get her right, that he should accept her rendering of herself.
She knew at each moment what he was thinking of her, and the
thing that went on between them was not a game--it was a duel, an
amicable duel, between her lucidity and his. Philippa respected
his lucidity.

"All the same," said Straker, "I am not the mos