olve to be patient and the politic determination
to court her as a queen.

"No, you keep to your original plan," he advised her; and then, with
thinly-veiled taunt, "It's funny to look back on the old days, when you
were miserable if twelve hours passed without our meeting. D'you
remember when you used to say how much you needed me?"

"I need you still," she answered, wondering at his new irritability.

"You got on very comfortably without me at the Cap Martin----"

"I should have been very uncomfortable if I hadn't known that you were
thinking of me, waiting for me, loving me, even----"

"And you'll get on very comfortably when you're at Crawleigh Abbey," he
persisted. "And to-morrow----"

"I've said I'll come to-morrow. Eric, you're not jealous of my dining
with other people? You're talking as if you were trying to pick a
quarrel. You were always so sweet. . . ."

"I'm not conscious of having changed," he answered stiffly.

But he was conscious of a change in her. While he was still indifferent,
she had prostrated herself before him; when he confessed his love, she
gathered up his own cast robes of indifference. It was feminine nature,
and her "education" of him was at least illustrating the
sex-generalizations which a man ought to have learned before leaving his
dame's-school.

"Don't let's quarrel, darling!" she begged. "_Whatever_ you ask, I'll
do! But, when I give, I want to give everything. Won't you be patient
with me?"

Ever since her return to England, Eric's nerves had been strained until
he found it first difficult and then impossible to work or sleep. When
he met her, there was always some trifling cause of annoyance; when he
stayed away, there was hunger and loneliness.

"I wonder how long you'd like me to be patient," he murmured.

"Before I marry you? Is that what you mean? Eric, I promise in the sight
of God that I'll marry you as soon as I can do it with a good
conscience. You don't want me to be haunted all my life. And now, when
we even speak of it . . . It's my punishment."

"I'm sorry, Barbara. I've made you look quite miserable."

She bent his head forward and kissed him.

"I've never been _really_ miserable since I knew that you loved me," she
whispered.

Though the quarrel was composed, the taut nerves were still unrelaxed;
and, after two more nights of insomnia, Eric was driven to consult his
doctor. The examination, with its attendant annoyances of sounding and
questioning,