sy equally
orthodox. But how much happier they both would have been on a bleak
mountain-side eating stew out of a pot! Even champagne and old brandy
failed to exercise mellowing influences. The twain were petrified in
their own awful correctitude. Perhaps if they had proceeded to a musical
comedy or a farce or a variety entertainment where Jaffery could have
expanded his lungs in laughter, their evening as a whole might have been
less dismal. But a misapprehension as to the nature of the play had
caused Jaffery to book seats for a gloomy drama with an ironical title,
which stupefied them with depression.

When they waited for the front door of the house in Queen's Gate to open
to their ring, Liosha in her best manner thanked him for a most
enjoyable evening.

"Most enjoyable indeed," said Jaffery. "We must have another, if you
will do me the honour. What do you say to this day week?"

"I shall be delighted," said Liosha.

So that day week they repeated this extraordinary performance, and the
week after that, and so on until it became a grim and terrifying
fixture. And while Jaffery, in a fog of theory as to the Eternal
Feminine, was trying to do his duty, Liosha struggled hard to smother
her own tumultuous feelings and to carry out Barbara's prescription for
the treatment of overgrown babies; but the deuce of it was that though
in her eyes Jaffery was pleasantly overgrown, she could not for the life
of her regard him as a baby. So it came to pass that an unnatural pair
continued to meet and mystify and misunderstand each other to the great
content of the high gods and of one unimportant human philosopher who
looked on.

"I told you all this artificiality was spoiling her," Jaffery growled,
one day. "She's as prim as an old maid. I can't get anything out of
her."

"That's a pity," said I.

"It is." He reflected for a moment. "And the more so because she looks
so stunning in her evening gowns. She wipes the floor with all the other
women."

I smiled. You can get a lot of quiet amusement out of your friends if
you know how to set to work.

CHAPTER XIV

It was a gorgeous April day--one of those days when young Spring in
madcap masquerade flaunts it in the borrowed mantle of summer. She could
assume the deep blue of the sky and the gold of the sunshine, but
through all the travesty peeped her laughing youth, the little tender
leaves on the trees, the first shy bloom of the lilac, the swelling of
the ha