door shut, and there was a long
period without Phillida, until it opened and shut again, and in she peeped
with her parasol and Prayer-book, as though they were all quite ordinary
people without a guilty secret among them!

Such was the Sunday morning. It was fine and warm. Dr. Baumgartner
pottered about his untidy little garden, a sun-trap again as Pocket had
seen it first; the Turk's head perspired from internal and external heat,
but its rich yellow, shading into richer auburn, clashed rather with a red
geranium which the doctor wore jauntily in the button-hole of his black
alpaca jacket.

It was Phillida who had given him the flower at breakfast. She grew what
she could in the neglected garden; the plants in the miniature
conservatory were also hers, though the doctor took a perfunctory interest
in them, obviously on her account. It was obvious at least to Pocket
Upton. He saw all these things, and what they meant. He was not without
his little gifts of observation and deduction. He noticed the difference
in Baumgartner's voice when he addressed his niece, the humane kindling of
the inexorable eyes, and to-day he thought he saw a reciprocal softening
on the part of Phillida. There had been none to see yesterday or the day
before. It was her uncle whom the girl had seemed unable to forgive for
the unseemly scuffle of Friday morning. But now it was as though memory
and common fairness had set years of kindness against these days of
unendurable mystery, and bidden her endure them with a better grace. If
she felt she had been disloyal to him, she could not have made sweeter
amends than she did by many an unobtrusive little office. And she
exchanged no more confidences with poor Pocket.

Yet these two were together most of the day; all three were; and it was a
strangely peaceful day, a day of natural hush, and the cessation of life's
hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed before or
after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket certainly drew his
spiritual breath more freely than on any other since the dire catastrophe.
There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one before evening was the
removal of the book on hallucinations in which Pocket had become
interested on the Saturday afternoon. It was no longer lying about the
room as he had left it. There was a gap in its place in the shelf. The
book had been taken away from him; it made him feel as though he were back
again at