Penelope had shared together.

"Sandy"--she spoke impetuously. "After I'm--married, I don't think I
shall ever go to London again. It would be like peeping into heaven.
Then the door would slam and I'd come back--here! I'm out of it
now--out of everything. The others will all go on singing and playing
and making books and pictures--right in the heart of it all. While I
shall be stuck away here . . . by myself . . . making soup jellies!"

She sprang up and walked restlessly to the window, staring out at the
undulating meadowland.

"I'm sick of the sight of those fields!" she exclaimed almost
violently. "The same deadly dull green fields day after day. If--if
one of them would only turn pink for a change it would be a relief!"
Her breath caught in a strangled sob.

Sandy followed her to the window.

"Look here, Nan, you can't go on like this." There was an unaccustomed
decision in his tones; the boyish inflection had gone. It was a man
who was speaking, and determinedly, too. "You've no business to be
everlastingly gazing at green fields. You ought to be turning 'em into
music so that the people who've got only bricks and mortar to stare at
can get a whiff of them."

Nan gazed at him in astonishment--at this new, surprising Sandy who was
talking to her with the forcefulness of a man ten years his senior.

"As for being 'out of it,' as you say," he went on emphatically. "If
you are, it's only by your own consent. Anyone who writes as you can
need never be out of it. If you'd only do the big stuff you're capable
of doing, you'd be 'in it' right enough--half the time confabbing with
singers and conductors, and the other half glad to get back to your
green fields and the blessed quiet. If you were like me, now--not a
damn bit of good because I've no technical knowledge . . ."

In an instant her quick sympathies responded to the note of regret
which he could not keep quite out of his voice.

"Sandy, I'm a beast to grouse. It's true--you've had much harder
luck." She spoke eagerly, then paused, checked by a sudden piercing
memory. "But--but music . . . after all, it isn't the only thing."

"No," he returned cheerfully. "But it will do quite well to go on
with. Let's toddle along to the piano and amuse each other."

She nodded, and together they made their way to the West Parlour.

"Have you written anything new?" he asked, turning over some sheets of
scribbled, manuscript that were lying on the