eat at a bend of the walk. The spot was charming, and
Lily was not insensible to the charm, or to the fact that her presence
enhanced it; but she was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude
except in company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic
scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to
profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she
rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked;
the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her
lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to
find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a
vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness
about her.

Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead, digging the
ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade. As she did so a
step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at her side.

"How fast you walk!" he remarked. "I thought I should never catch up with
you."

She answered gaily: "You must be quite breathless! I've been sitting
under that tree for an hour."

"Waiting for me, I hope?" he rejoined; and she said with a vague laugh:

"Well--waiting to see if you would come."

"I seize the distinction, but I don't mind it, since doing the one
involved doing the other. But weren't you sure that I should come?"

"If I waited long enough--but you see I had only a limited time to give
to the experiment."

"Why limited? Limited by luncheon?"

"No; by my other engagement."

"Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?"

"No; but to come home from church with another person."

"Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with alternatives.
And is the other person coming home this way?"

Lily laughed again. "That's just what I don't know; and to find out, it
is my business to get to church before the service is over."

"Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which case
the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the desperate resolve
of driving back in the omnibus."

Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like the
bubbling of her inner mood. "Is that what you would do in such an
emergency?" she enquired.

Selden looked at her with solemnity. "I am here to prove to you," he
cried, "what I am capable of doing in an emergency!"

"Walking a mile in an