ere caps inside of them, and crackers."

"I believe you are a poet, after all," she said.

A shadow fell across the flags. Honora did not move.

"Hello, Chiltern," said Cuthbert. "I thought you were playing bridge..."

"You haven't looked at me once to-night," he said, when Cuthbert had gone
in.

She was silent.

"Are you angry?"

"Yes, a little," she answered. "Do you blame me?"

The vibration of his voice in the moonlit court awoke an answering chord
in her; and a note of supplication from him touched her strangely. Logic
in his presence was a little difficult--there can be no doubt of that.

"I must go in," she said unsteadily, "my carriage is waiting."

But he stood in front of her.

"I should have thought you would have gone," she said.

"I wanted to see you again."

"And now?"

"I can't leave while you feel this way," he pleaded. "I can't abandon
what I have of you--what you will let me take. If I told you I would be
reasonable--"

"I don't believe in miracles," she said, recovering a little; "at least
in modern ones. The question is, could you become reasonable?"

"As a last resort," he replied, with a flash of humour and a touch of
hope. "If you would--commute my sentence."

She passed him, and picking up her skirts, paused in the window.

"I will give you one more chance," she said.

This was the conversation that, by repeating itself, filled the interval
of her drive home. So oblivious was she to Howard's presence, that he
called her twice from her corner of the carriage after the vehicle had
stopped; and he halted her by seizing her arm as she was about to go up
the stairs. She followed him mechanically into the drawing-room.

He closed the door behind them, and the other door into the darkened
dining room. He even took a precautionary glance out of the window of the
porch. And these movements, which ordinarily might have aroused her
curiosity, if not her alarm, she watched with a profound indifference. He
took a stand before the Japanese screen in front of the fireplace, thrust
his hands in his pockets, cleared his throat, and surveyed her from her
white shoulders to the gold-embroidered tips of her slippers.

"I'm leaving for the West in the morning, Honora. If you've made any
arrangements for me on Sunday, you'll have to cancel them. I may be gone
two weeks, I may be gone a month. I don't know."

"Yes," she said.

"I'm going to tell you something those fellows in the smoking roo