e in, walked for some time in the garden,
taking counsel with himself. The expression of his face was still half
touched and half alarmed. He smoked two cigarettes and then came to the
conclusion that, until he could have a talk with Helen, there was no
conclusion to be come to. He never came to important conclusions
unaided. He would sleep on it and then have a talk with Helen.

He sought her out next morning on the first opportunity. She was in the
library writing letters. She looked, as was usual with her at early
morning hours, odd to the verge of ugliness. It always took her some
time to recover from the drowsy influences of the night. She was dimmed,
as it were, with eyelids half awake, and small lips pouting, and she
seemed at once more childlike and more worn than later in the day.
Gerald looked at her with satisfaction. To his observant and
appreciative eye, Helen was often at her most charming when at her
ugliest.

'I've something to talk over,' he said. 'Can you give me half an hour or
so?'

She answered, 'Certainly,' laying down her pen, and leaning back in her
chair.

'Your letters aren't important? I may keep you for a longish time.
Perhaps we might put it off till the afternoon?'

'They aren't in the least important. You may keep me as long as you
like.'

'Thanks. Have a cigarette?' He offered his case, and Helen took one and
lighted it at the match he held for her, and then Gerald, lighting his
own, proceeded to stroll up and down the room reflecting.

'Helen,' he began, 'I've been thinking things over.' His tone was
serene, yet a little inquiring. He might have been thinking over some
rather uncertain investment, or the planning of a rather exacting trip
abroad. Yet Helen's intuition leaped at once to deeper significances.
Looking out of the window at the lawn, bleached with dew, the trees, the
distant autumnal uplands, while she quietly smoked her cigarette, it was
as if her sub-consciousness, aroused and vigilant, held its breath,
waiting.

'You know,' said Gerald, 'what I've always really wanted to do more than
anything else. As I get older, I want it more and more, and get more and
more tired of my shambling sort of existence. I love this old place and
I love the country. I'd like nothing so much as to be able to live here,
try my hand at farming, paint a little, read a little, and get as much
hunting as I could.'

Helen, blowing a ring of smoke and watching it softly hover, made no
com