ong. Every morning since you
came I've been expecting you to go. I thought you'd say your father
was dying, or that your partner was ill, and you had urgent business
in town. It's what they all do. Do you know, we've asked no end of
people down, and they never stay more than three days. They always
get letters or telegrams, or something. No, I'm wrong; one man
stopped a week. He sprained his ankle the first day, and left before
he was fit to travel."

(Durant laughed. She really amused him, this _ingenue_ of thirty,
with the face of a Sphinx and the conversation of a child.)

"And they never come again. There's something about the place they
can _not_ stand."

They were walking leisurely together in full sight of Coton Manor.
She gazed at it anxiously.

"Does it--does it look so very awful?"

"Well--architecturally speaking--no, of course it doesn't."

"Ah, you're getting used to it. Do you know you'll have been here a
fortnight next Monday?"

About the corners of her mouth and eyes there played a dawning
humor.

"Come, that sounds as if you did want me to go."

"No it doesn't. How could it? If you don't believe me, here's the
proof--you can ride Polly every day if you'll stop another week."

Another week! Most decidedly she had a sense of the monstrous humor
of the thing. If she could see it that way she was saved. He had not
the heart to kill that happy mood by a coarse refusal; it would have
been like grinding his heel on some delicate, struggling thing just
lifting its head into life.

Besides, she had really touched him. His legs, as Miss Tancred had
observed, were a little long, otherwise Durant had the soul and the
physique of a tamer of horses. The sight of Polly filled him with
desire that was agony and rapture; he saw himself controlling the
splendid animal; he could feel her under him, bounding, quivering,
pulsating, he himself made one with every movement of her nervous,
passionate body. It was too much. Beside that large, full-blooded
pleasure, his scruples showed colorless and light as air.

That happened on a Friday. He had only two clear days more. He found
himself seriously considering the desirability of staying over
Monday.

VII

As ill-luck would have it Saturday was a wet day, and Durant,
instead of riding the mare, was wandering aimlessly about the house.
He had finished all the books in his bedroom and was badly in want
of more. He knocked up against Frida Tancred in a dark p