d at last, as if it were a sort of
emotional confidence.

"Yes," she answered. Only, "Yes."

Once round the great ballroom, twice, and he gave a little laugh and
spoke again.

"I am going to ask you a question. May I?"

"Yes."

"Is your name Robin?"

"Yes." She could scarcely breathe it.

"I thought it was. I hoped it was--after I first began to suspect. I
_hoped_ it was."

"It is--it is."

"Did we once play together in a garden?"

"Yes--yes."

Back swept the years, and the wonderful happiness began again.

* * * * *

In the shining ballroom the music rose and fell and swelled again into
ecstasy as he held her white young lightness in his arm and they swayed
and darted and swooped like things of the air--while the old Duchess and
Lord Coombe looked on almost unseeing and talked in murmurs of
Sarajevo.

ROBIN

CHAPTER I

It was a soft starlit night mystically changing into dawn when Donal
Muir left the tall, grave house on Eaton Square after the strangely
enchanted dance given by the old Dowager Duchess of Darte. A certain
impellingness of mood suggested that exercise would be a good thing and
he decided to walk home. It was an impellingness of body as well as
mind. He had remained later than the relative who had by chance been
responsible for his being brought, an uninvited guest, to the party. The
Duchess had not known that he was in London. It may also be accepted as
a fact that to this festivity given for the pleasure of Mrs.
Gareth-Lawless' daughter, she might not have chosen to assume the
responsibility of extending him an invitation. She knew something of his
mother and had sometimes discussed her with her old friend, Lord Coombe.
She admired Helen Muir greatly and was also much touched by certain
aspects of her maternity. What Lord Coombe had told her of the meeting
of the two children in the Gardens, of their innocent child passion of
attraction for each other, and of the unchildlike tragedy their enforced
parting had obviously been to both had at once deeply interested and
moved her. Coombe had only been able to relate certain surface incidents
connected with the matter, but they had been incidents not easy to
forget and from which unusual things might be deduced. No! She would
not have felt prepared to be the first to deliberately throw these two
young people across each other's paths at this glowing moment of their
early blooming--knowing as