oyment of his talk, her gay acceptance of their
now almost constant companionship, were things new in his experience of
women, and might have warned him that she at least was heart-whole. They
would have done had he ever faced the fact that his own heart had caught
fire. He bicycled with her along the pleasant Kentish lanes; he rowed
with her on the little river of dreams; he read to her in the quiet of
the August garden; he gave himself up wholly to the pleasure of those
hours that flew like moments--those days that passed like hours. They
talked of books and of the heart of books--and inevitably they talked of
themselves. He talked of himself less than most men, but he learned much
of her life. She was an ardent social reformer; had lived in an
Art-and-Culture-for-the-People settlement in Whitechapel; had studied at
the London School of Economics. Now she had come back to be with her
mother, who needed her. She and her mother were almost alone in the
world; there was enough to live on, but not too much. The letting of the
little house had been Celia's idea: its rent was merely for "luxuries."
He found out from the mother, when she came to tolerate him, that the
"luxuries" were Celia's--the luxuries of helping the unfortunate,
feeding the hungry, and clothing little shivering children in winter
time.

And all this while he had not heard a word of sister or cousin--of any
one whom he might identify as the tobacconist's assistant.

It was on an evening when the level sunbeams turned the meadows by the
riverside to fine gold, and the willows and alders to trees of Paradise,
that he spoke suddenly, leaning forward on his sculls. "Have you," he
asked, looking into her face, "any relation who is in a shop?"

"No," said she; "why?"

"I only wondered," said he coldly.

"But what an extraordinary thing to wonder!" she said. "Do tell me what
made you think of it."

"Very well," he said, "I will. The person who told me that your mother
had lodgings, also told me that your mother had a daughter who served in
a shop."

"Never!" she cried. "What a hateful idea!"

"A tobacconist's shop," he persisted; "and her name was Susannah
Sheepmarsh."

"Oh," she answered, "that was me." She spoke instantly and frankly, but
she blushed crimson.

"And you're ashamed of it,--Socialist?" he asked with a sneer, and his
eyes were fierce on her burning face.

"I'm not! Row home, please. Or I'll take the sculls if you're tired, or
your s