cene in a book where the lover has to choose
between love and duty. But just then she looked round at him. Never was
anything so intoxicating as that vivacious look. It acted on him
exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a dog--brought him up to her with
his tail wagging and his tongue out.

"Don't let's be silly," she said, "time's too short. Look, Jon, you can
just see where I've got to cross the river. There, round the bend,
where the woods begin."

Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the
trees--and felt his heart sink.

"I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next hedge,
it gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye."

They went side by side, hand in hand, silently towards the hedge, where
the mayflower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.

"My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters there
will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week."

Jon nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared straight
before him.

"To-day's the twenty-third of May," said Fleur; "on the ninth of July I
shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three o'clock; will
you?"

"I will."

"If you feel as bad as I it's all right. Let those people pass!"

A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in Sunday
fashion.

The last of them passed the wicket gate.

"Domesticity!" said Fleur, and blotted herself against the hawthorn
hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster
brushed her cheek. Jon put up his hand jealously to keep it off.

"Good-bye, Jon!" For a second they stood with hands hard clasped. Then
their lips met for the third time, and when they parted Fleur broke
away and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood where she had left
him, with his forehead against that pink cluster. Gone! For an
eternity--for seven weeks all but two days! And here he was, wasting
the last sight of her! He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly
on the heels of the straggling children. She turned her head, he saw
her hand make a little flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the
trailing family blotted her out from his view.

The words of a comic song--

"Paddington groan--worst ever known--
He gave a sepulchral Paddington groan--"

came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading station.
All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with "The Heart of
the Trail" open on h