ed all the way, while my heart was in a big lump in
my throat, and I could hardly keep from crying, like the foolish old
woman that I am. I ought to have been talking, and helping Pia to
pretend.

"She has been quite gay all to-day, and oddly gentle too. But you know
the kind of gayness. And to-night my heart feels like breaking for her,
for there is some sad mystery I can't fathom. So, Trix dearest, I have
written to you, because I cannot keep it all to myself. And I am crying
again now, though I know I oughtn't to. So I am going to leave off, and
say the rosary instead.

"Good night, my dear Trix.
"Your affectionate old friend,
"Esther Tibbutt.

P.S. I wish you could come down here again. Can't you?"

Trix leant back in her chair, and drew a long breath. The novel was
utterly and entirely forgotten. So _that_ was what Pia's letter had
meant. It was this man she had been thinking of all the time. A dozen
little unanswered questions were answered now, a dozen queer little
riddles solved.

Trix slid down off her chair on to the bear-skin rug in front of the
fire. She leant her arms sideways on the chair, resting her chin upon
them. Most assuredly she must place the whole matter clearly before her
mind, in so far as possible. She gazed steadily at the glowing coals,
ruminative, reflective.

And firstly it was presented to her mind as the paramount fact, that it
was the mention of this man--this Michael Field, so-called--that had been
the direct cause of Pia's odd irritability, and not the indirect cause,
as she most erroneously had imagined. Somehow, in some way, he had caused
her such pain that the mere mention of his name had been like laying a
hand roughly on a wound. Secondly, though Trix most promptly dismissed
the memory, there was Pia's hurting little speech, the speech which had
followed on her--Trix's--theories promulgated beneath the lime trees. In
the light of Miss Tibbutt's letter that speech was easy enough of
explanation. Had not Pia had practical proof of the unworkableness of
those theories? Proof which must have hurt her quite considerably. How
utterly and entirely childish her words must have seemed to Pia,--Pia who
_knew_, while she truly was merely surmising, setting forth ideas which
assuredly she had never attempted to put into practice. Thirdly--Trix
ticked off the f