People remarked that summer that Patience looked unusually well. At times her eyes had a certain liquid softness, at others they sparkled wickedly. Her colour was beautiful and her manner and conversation full of animation.

It was on a hot August afternoon that Patience and Steele, in the green shades of their wood, suddenly met each other’s eyes and burst out laughing.

“We are in love,” said Patience.

“Well—yes—I suppose we are.”

“I feel very light-minded over this unexpected dÉnouement. I had imagined all sorts of dramatic climaxes; but the unexpected always will happen in this life—more’s the pity.”

“Did you expect we should not fall in love?”

“I did not think about it at all for a time—just drifted. But as the situation is so serious it is as well to take it humourously. What are we going to do about it?”

He had removed his cigar, and was regarding her with his contemplative stare. “I have thanked your complicated ancestors more than once for your large variety of moods. I am glad and sorry that you have spoken: sorry, because this was very pleasant; glad that the discussion of ways and means should take place here instead of in town. I shall be brutally frank. How long is your husband likely to live?”

“He may live for twenty years. I heard the doctors—they have a consultation every once in a while—tell Mrs. Peele so the other day. He is much better. On the other hand, he might take a turn for the worse any day.”

“Then you must persuade him to give you a divorce.”

“Oh, dear, I am afraid that is out of the question. I’ve thought of it; but—you don’t know him.”

“You are a clever woman: now look up your resources. Enlist the family on your side. Tell them that you are about to leave, never to return, and that you are on the road to become a famous newspaper woman; that if they will persuade your husband to give you a divorce you will drop their name; otherwise that it will be dinned in their ears for the next twenty years. Tell them that we intend to let you sign hereafter. That ought to fetch them, as they appear to look upon the newspaper business with shuddering horror. And persuade them that Beverly needs a good domestic little wife who would gladden his declining years.”

“I’m sorry I feel in this mood,” said Patience, abruptly. “I should far rather it had been the other way—the usual way. I suppose I am possessed with what Poe calls The Imp of the Perverse.”

“My dear girl, I need not remind you that it is just as well and a good deal better. You need a shaking to wake you up, though. You imagine that you are awake already, but you are not—not by a long sight. You have buried your nature five fathoms deep. Well, time is up. I must be off. Think over what I have said. Good-bye.”