AT THE end of the week Dr. Carey ceased his visits, "You won't need me any more," he assured Marie. "Take care of yourself, that is all, and no more bathing this season."

Marie shivered, "No, I promise that."

She was feeling quite herself again, though she got tired easily. She had written to Aunt Madge, making light of her accident, and assuring her that there was no need to worry.

"And I am ever so happy," she wrote, with desolation in her heart "And I like the hotel, and there are nice people here, and everyone is very kind to me. I will let you know when we are coming home."

Chris came and stood behind her as she was writing and caught sight of the first sentence.

"Is that true?" he asked. He pointed to the words: "I am ever so happy."

Marie laughed, but she was glad that he could not see her face.

"Of course, it's true," she said. "I have never had such a good time in my life."

A more observant man would have heard the flatness of her voice, but Chris only heard what he wanted to hear, and it gave him a sense of relief. If she was happy, that was all right. He thought things had arranged themselves admirably. Marriage was not going to be the tie he had dreaded, after all.

"Mrs. Heriot wants me to play a round of golf with her this 57 afternoon." he said after a moment. "Do you mind?"

"Of course not. Please go. I shall be all right; I am going to take my book down on the sands."

"Very well—don't overtire yourself." He laid his hand on her shoulder for a moment and then walked away.

Marie sat staring at the finished letter before her. Would Aunt Madge be as blind as Chris, she wondered. She thrust it into an envelope and took it to the post.

The weather was still holding fine. The days were hot and sunny and the nights moonlit.

Last night at dinner she had asked Chris to take her for a walk. It was the first time she had asked anything of him since their marriage, but she had peeped at the moonlit sands and sea from her window as she was dressing for dinner and a sudden longing to walk through its silvery radiance with Chris had seized upon her.

"Come out with you? Why, of course!" Chris said in quick response. "I promised to play Feathers a hundred up at half-past eight, but that won't take long, and we can go afterwards."

But it had taken over an hour, and afterwards another man who had watched the game had challenged Chris to another, and quite unintentionally Chris had forgotten all about his promise to Marie, and she had crept off to bed at ten o'clock without seeing him again.

"I shall get used to it, of course I shall," she told herself as she lay awake with the moonlight pouring through the open window. "Other women with husbands like Chris get used to it, and so shall I."

She never shed tears about him; all her tears seemed to have been dried up. Her only longing was that he should be happy, and that she should never bore him or prove a tie to his freedom.

She loved him with complete unselfishness—with complete foolishness, too, perhaps an unkind critic might have said.

His was a nature so easily spoilt. If anybody offered him his own way he took it without demur. He liked things to go smoothly. If he 58 was having a good time himself he took it for granted that everybody else was, too.

He went off to his golf quite happily. He told Mrs. Heriot that Marie had taken a book down to the sands.

"Alone?" Mrs. Heriot laughed. "How queer! Doesn't she find it dull?"

"She loves reading—she'll be quite happy."

And Chris really believed what he was saying.

He did not care a jot for Mrs. Heriot, but she played golf magnificently, and she was never tired. She could be out on the links all day and dance all night, and still look as fresh as paint—perhaps because she owed most of her freshness to paint and powder.

As she and Chris were leaving the hotel they encountered Feathers.

Feathers stopped dead in front of his friend, blocking the way.

"Where are you going?" he asked uncompromisingly.

"Where are we going?" Chris echoed with sarcasm. "Where do you think we are going? Hunting?"

Mrs. Heriot laughed immoderately. She did not like Feathers, and she knew that he did not like her or approve of her friendship with Chris, and it pleased her to read the annoyance in his ugly face.

"We're going golfing, Mr. Dakers," she said. "Don't you recognize the clubs? I thought you were a golfer."

"He hates me, you know," she explained to Chris as they went on down the road.

"He doesn't like any women," Chris said easily.

"You really think so?" she asked, raising her brows.

"I am sure of it." He seemed struck by her silence, and turned his head sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Only that I thought he seemed rather friendly with your little wife," she explained.

"Oh, with Marie!" Chris laughed. "Yes, I'm glad to say he is. They get on very well together. He saved her life, you know."

"Of course! How stupid of me!" She pretended that she had forgotten, and Chris frowned.

59 "Why on earth can't the woman be natural?" he was thinking impatiently. He had quite missed her venomous little shaft with regard to his wife and Feathers. His was a most unsuspicious nature, and he cared too little for Marie to feel the slightest jealousy.

He had laughed at Atkins' devotion to her. Atkins was a young idiot, but he had been pleased that she and Feathers had taken such a liking to one another. It argued well for a future in which Chris could see himself wanting to knock about town with Feathers as he had done before he was married.

They played a round of golf, and Mrs. Heriot beat him.

"What a triumph!" she said mockingly, when they sat down to rest on a grassy slope. "You're not playing well to-day, Chris."

She had always called him by his Christian name. She was one of those women who call all men by their Christian names without first being invited to do so.

She was a widow with a large income, and a spiteful nature. She did not actually wish to re-marry, because if she did so she would lose the money left her by her husband, but all the same, she did not like to see her men friends monopolized and married by other women.

She was thinking of her husband now, as she sat, chin on hand, staring down at Chris, sprawled beside her on the grass.

Duncan Heriot had died in India while his wife was in England, and he had died of too much drink and an enlarged liver. As she looked at Chris, with his handsome face and long, lithe figure, she was mentally contrasting him with the short, stubby man whom she had married solely for his money.

She liked Chris for the same reason that he liked her. They had many tastes in common and seldom bored one another.

She was a year or two older than he, but she was still a young woman, and had it not been for the money question she would have done her best to marry him; but she knew that Chris had no money, and life without money was to Mrs. Heriot very much as a motor-car 60 would be without its engine. So she had launched the craft of Plato between them, and comforted herself with the thought that he was not a marrying man.

It had been a real shock to her to hear of his wedding. She had been very anxious to meet his wife and find out for herself why he had so suddenly changed his mind.

Her quick eyes had already discovered that it had not been for love! She had made a life study of the opposite sex, and she knew without any telling that there was another reason for which she must seek.

"You know," she said, abruptly, "I was ever so surprised to hear that you were married?"

"Were you?" Christ tilted his hat further over his eyes. "Most people were, I think. Poor old Feathers was absolutely disgusted."

"It was very sudden, wasn't it?" she pursued. "Quite romantic, from all accounts."

"Oh, I don't know. I've known her all my life—we were brought up together."

"Really!" She opened her eyes wide. "Cousins or something?" she hazarded.

"No. Marie's father adopted me."

Chris rose to his feet and yawned. He knew that he was being pumped.

"Shall we play another round?" he asked.

"Of course." She was a little chagrined. She had imagined that their friendship was on too secure a basis to permit of such a decided snubbing. She played badly, as she always did when she was annoyed, and Chris won easily.

"You threw that away deliberately," he challenged her.

She laughed. "Did I? Perhaps I did. You annoyed me."

"In what way?"

"I thought we were friends, and when I ventured to be interested in your marriage you snubbed me abominably."

Her eyes were plaintive as they met his, and, manlike, Chris felt slightly flattered.

Mrs. Heriot was a much-sought-after woman and he knew that she had 61 always shown a distinct preference for his society.

"I did not think you would be interested." he said lamely. "And there is nothing to tell if you are looking for a romance."

"That is what you say." she declared. "But that is so like a man— never will admit it when he cares for a woman."

Chris colored a little. He could not imagine what it was she wanted him to say.

"You've always been such a confirmed bachelor." she went on. "I am beginning to think that your wife must be a very wonderful woman to have so completely metamorphosed you."

Chris frowned. He resented this cross-examination even while he was half inclined to think it unreasonable of him to do so. After all, he had known Mrs. Heriot some considerable time, and, as she said, they had always been good friends.

"I can tell you one thing," he said half seriously. "And that is, that my wife is the only woman in the world for whom I would have given up my bachelor freedom! There, will that satisfy you?"

Mrs. Heriot smiled sweetly. She always smiled sweetly when she was feeling particularly vixenish.

"How sweet of you! How very sweet!" she murmured. "Of course, I have always said what a particularly charming girl she is—so unspoilt, so unsophisticated! I suppose it is just another case of like attracting unlike."

"I suppose it is," said Chris bluntly. He wished to goodness she would talk about something else. He was shrewd enough to detect the sting beneath her sugary words, and all his pride, if nothing more, rose in defense of Marie. He thought of her with a little glow of affectionate warmth.

"She's the most unselfish child I've ever met." he said impulsively.

She was still a child to him. It was odd that he still could not dissociate her in his mind from the little girl with the pigtail and wistful eyes who had waited on him hand and foot all his life. 62 Perhaps if he could have realized that Marie was a woman, at least in heart and thoughts, there might have been a better understanding between them; but as it was—well, everything was all right, and Marie had written to Aunt Madge that she was "ever so happy."

It was just as they reached the hotel again that Mrs. Heriot said with a sentimental sigh: "Perfect, perfect weather, isn't it? Glorious days, and—oh, did you notice the moon last night?"

Chris stood quite still. With a shock of guilt he remembered Marie's little request to him and his own forgetfulness. The angry blood rushed to his face. He hated to feel that perhaps he had disappointed her.

He left Mrs. Heriot in the lounge and went straight up to his wife's room. She was not there, but a book which he knew she had been reading was lying open on her dressing-table and a little pair of white shoes stood neatly together on the rug.

Chris rubbed the back of his head with a curiously boyish look of embarrassment. It seemed odd to think that he and little Marie Celeste were really husband and wife! He cast a furtive look at himself in her mirror. He did not look much like a married man, he thought, and laughed as he took up the book which Marie had been reading. It was a book of poems, and Chris made a little grimace. He had never read a poem in his life, but his eyes fell now on some of the lines which had been faintly underscored with a pencil:

He read the words through twice with a vague sense of discomfort.

Had Marie underlined them—and if so, why? They did not convey a tremendous deal to Chris, though he had a faintly uncomfortable feeling that they might to a woman.

63 Marie was not twenty-five either, she was only nineteen! And anyway it was absurd to imagine that she was finding the world bitter when she had just written home to Aunt Madge that she was quite happy.

He had still got the book in his hand when the door opened and Marie came in. She caught her breath when she saw her husband.

"You, Chris!"

"Yes, I thought you were in." He turned round, holding out the book. "Are you reading this?"

"Yes." She tried to take it from him, but he avoided her. "Did you underline that verse?"

He saw the color flicker into her face, but she laughed as she bent over the book and read the words he indicated.

"Did I? Of course not. It's a pretty poem. It's Tennyson's 'Maud,' you know." Chris knew nothing about Tennyson's "Maud," but he was relieved to hear the natural way in which his wife spoke. He shut the book and threw it down carelessly.

"I came to say that I'm sorry about last night—about forgetting to take you out, I mean. I clean forgot all about it. We'll go to- night, shall we?" There was the smallest hesitation before she answered. She was taking off her hat at the wardrobe so he could not see her face.

"Mr. Dakers has two tickets for a concert," she said at last, "I almost promised him I would go." She waited. "If you don't mind," she added.

"Of course, I don't mind. Go by all means. I dare say you'll enjoy it. I shall be all right—I can have a game at billiards with someone. I suppose it's time to dress?"

"Yes, I think so."

"See you downstairs, then?"

"Yes."

Chris went off whistling. He was quite happy again. Somebody else had marked that verse. He ought to have known Marie Celeste would not be so foolish—and they were stupid lines anyway. He could not imagine why anybody ever wanted to read poetry.

64