I'm sorry!"
She held out her hand.

Buntingford was supremely touched, and could not for the moment find a
jest wherewith to disguise it.

"Thank you!" he said quietly, at last. "Thank you, Helena. That was very
nice of you." And with a sudden movement he stooped and kissed the wet
and rather quivering hand he held. At the same moment, the searchlight
which had been travelling about the pond, lighting up one boat after
another to the amusement of the persons in them, and of those watching
from the shore, again caught the boat in which sat Buntingford and
Helena. Both figures stood sharply out. Then the light had travelled on,
and Helena had hastily withdrawn her hand.

She fell back on the cushions of the stern seat, vexed with her own
agitation. She had described herself truly. She was proud, and it was
hard for her to "climb down." But there was much else in the mixed
feeling that possessed her. There seemed, for one thing, to be a curious
happiness in it; combined also with a renewed jealousy for an
independence she might have seemed to be giving away. She wanted to
say--"Don't misunderstand me!--I'm not really giving up anything vital--I
mean all the same to manage my life in my own way." But it was difficult
to say it in the face of the coatless man opposite, of whose house she
had become practically mistress, and who had changed all his personal
modes of life to suit hers. Her eyes wandered to the gay scene of the
house and its gardens, with its Watteau-ish groups of young men and
maidens, under the night sky, its light and music. All that had been
done, to give her pleasure, by a man who had for years conspicuously
shunned society, and whose life in the old country house, before her
advent, had been, as she had come to know, of the quietest. She bent
forward again, impulsively:

"Cousin Philip!--I'm enjoying this party enormously--it's awfully,
awfully good of you--but I don't want you to do it any more--"

"Do what, Helena?"

"Please, I can get along without any more week-ends, or parties. You--you
spoil me!"

"Well--we're going up to London, aren't we, soon? But I daresay you're
right"--his tone grew suddenly grave. "While we dance, there is a
terrible amount of suffering going on in the world."

"You mean--after the war?"

He nodded. "Famine everywhere--women and children dying--half a dozen
bloody little wars. And here at home we seem to be on the brink of
civil war."

"We oughtn't to be amusing