; it isn't at all safe.
I shall have to think of Mr. Heath all the way home, and he is _such_ a
gaunt, scraggy kind of thought."

"I wish I could replace him with myself," said Hartley, in a burst of
admiration.

Mrs. Wilder accepted his compliment graciously and walked across the
grass to the drive, where her car panted almost noiselessly, as is the
way of good cars, and he put her in with the manner of a jeweller
putting a precious diamond pendant into a case. He watched the car
disappear, and considered that some men are undeservedly lucky in this
life.

Hartley was nearly forty, that dangerously sentimental age, and he began
to wonder if, by chance, he had met Clarice Wilder years ago in a
Devonshire orchard, life might not have been a wonderful thing. He
called her a "sweet woman" in his mind, and it was almost a pity that
Mrs. Wilder did not know, because her sense of humour was subtle and
acute, and she would have thoroughly enjoyed the description of herself.
She could read Hartley as quickly as she could read the telegrams in the
_Mangadone Times_, and she could play upon him as she played upon her
own grand piano.

She had not asked any questions, and she knew nothing of what Atkins had
said about Heath; but her face was set and tense as she drove towards
her bungalow. She was certainly thinking very definitely, quite as
definitely as Hartley had been thinking as he watched the moonlight
playing hide-and-seek with the shadows of the palm branches and the
darkness of the trees, and her thoughts left no pleasant look upon her
face or in her eyes; and yet Hartley, on his way to the bungalow where
he lived, was thinking of her in a white dress and a shady hat, with a
fleecy blue and white sky overhead and the scent of apple-blossom in the
air.

The power of romance is strong in adolescence, but it is stronger still
when the turnstile of years is reached and there is finality in the air.
Hartley was built for platonics; Fate gave him the necessary touch of
the commonplace that dispels romance and replaces it with a kind of
deadly domesticity; and yet Hartley was unaware of the fact.

He had never thought of being "in love" with Mrs. Wilder, partly because
he felt it would be "no use," and partly because she had never seemed to
expect it from him, but as he walked along the road he began to find
that her manner had of late altered considerably. She seemed to take an
interest in him, and though she had always