fine day.

And it was a fine day; a delicious day, with the horror of the Infinite
veiled by the splendid tent of blue; a day innocently bright like a child
with a washed face, fresh like an innocent young girl, suave in welcoming
one's respects like--like a Roman prelate. I love such days. They are
perfection for remaining indoors. And I enjoyed it temperamentally in a
chair, my feet up on the sill of the open window, a book in my hands and
the murmured harmonies of wind and sun in my heart making an
accompaniment to the rhythms of my author. Then looking up from the page
I saw outside a pair of grey eyes thatched by ragged yellowy-white
eyebrows gazing at me solemnly over the toes of my slippers. There was a
grave, furrowed brow surmounting that portentous gaze, a brown tweed cap
set far back on the perspiring head.

"Come inside," I cried as heartily as my sinking heart would permit.

After a short but severe scuffle with his dog at the outer door, Fyne
entered. I treated him without ceremony and only waved my hand towards a
chair. Even before he sat down he gasped out:

"We've heard--midday post."

Gasped out! The grave, immovable Fyne of the Civil Service, gasped! This
was enough, you'll admit, to cause me to put my feet to the ground
swiftly. That fellow was always making me do things in subtle discord
with my meditative temperament. No wonder that I had but a qualified
liking for him. I said with just a suspicion of jeering tone:

"Of course. I told you last night on the road that it was a farce we
were engaged in."

He made the little parlour resound to its foundations with a note of
anger positively sepulchral in its depth of tone. "Farce be hanged! She
has bolted with my wife's brother, Captain Anthony." This outburst was
followed by complete subsidence. He faltered miserably as he added from
force of habit: "The son of the poet, you know."

A silence fell. Fyne's several expressions were so many examples of
varied consistency. This was the discomfiture of solemnity. My interest
of course was revived.

"But hold on," I said. "They didn't go together. Is it a suspicion or
does she actually say that . . . "

"She has gone after him," stated Fyne in comminatory tones. "By previous
arrangement. She confesses that much."

He added that it was very shocking. I asked him whether he should have
preferred them going off together; and on what ground he based that
preference. This