"Toni, I have a proposal to make. Suppose you stop typing for a little while and listen to me. Will you, dear?"

Toni, all the colour slipping out of her face, put down the sheet she had just taken up and waited obediently to hear Owen's proposal.

This was the ninth day of their mutual labour; and even Toni's optimism could not assert that the experience had been successful.

She had tried so hard, poor Toni. With every nerve strained to the utmost, with her mind emptied of anything which did not bear upon the subject in hand, she had striven to help Owen, to take down from dictation the words, the sentences, in which his thoughts were clothed.

She had learned not to look up expectantly at every pause, since she had realized that to the harassed author, struggling for the one right phrase, that bright expectancy exercised a deadening effect; and she never even raised her head when silence fell—the silence in which Owen weighed and sifted his material, selecting this, rejecting that, and embodying the result in just the one glowing, clean-cut sentence which would effectually tell.

But Toni found herself, all unwillingly, handicapped, by her non-comprehension both of the matter and method of Owen's creative work.

A plain, straightforward story Toni could assimilate easily enough. Something primitive in her responded, also, to the call of the world-wide emotions of love, hatred, revenge; but Owen's book dealt with none of these; and the subtle philosophy, the carefully interwoven motives of political expediency and half-reluctant patriotism were alike uninteresting and unintelligible.

Where she did not understand, it was natural she should transcribe incorrectly; and although it was easy for Owen to revise the typewritten script after each day's labours, he was perpetually checked in his stride, as it were, by the necessity of repeating or explaining some incident or allusion by which Toni was frankly puzzled.

Naturally, too, the girl was nervous; and Owen's habit of striding to and fro as he dictated made things, as she said desperately to herself, far worse. In vain she quickened her pace in a wild attempt to keep up with him. Faster and faster went her pen, more and more indistinct grew the scribbled words; and in the hour of stress all ideas of spelling and punctuation took to themselves wings and fled.

But worse even than her comparative failure with the merely mechanical portion of the work was her mental inability to follow the working of Owen's mind. Handicapped by the necessity of dictating his book, the author often found himself at a standstill for some word which eluded him; and although he encouraged Toni to make suggestions, it was very seldom that she ventured to do so. The work went badly in consequence. Owen used to think sometimes that if Toni's mind had been more attuned to his, if they had shared ideas, had held the same standard in fiction, he might have gained something from this enforced collaboration; but as things were it became an irritation, effectually stopping the flow of his ideas; and although he did his best to keep Toni in ignorance of his feelings, she was bound to realize that the work was progressing in a lame and halting fashion.

Therefore she was not surprised when Owen broke it to her, gently, that he was thinking of a change of secretary.

"You see, dear,"—he spoke very kindly, feeling indeed very pitiful towards the girl, whose fluctuating colour showed her mental disturbance—"this sort of work demands a special training. You are doing your best, I know, and I am very grateful to you, but you can see, can't you, that I am getting on badly?"

"Yes, Owen." She spoke very slowly, and for a moment Owen wondered whether it would be possible to continue the present arrangement. Then common sense and creative ardour combined to utter a decided negative, and feeling himself to be brutal he hurried on.

"Unfortunately I shan't be able to use my arm for some weeks. That stupid old doctor ought to pay my secretary's fees, oughtn't he, since he's responsible for my helplessness!"

He laughed; but Toni said nothing, and after waiting a second he continued:

"You've been most awfully good and patient, dear, and I'm afraid I've been horribly irritable over the job. But I don't think it's any good our going on. I'm wearing you out, and losing a lot of time into the bargain."

"You are going on with the book?"

"Of course, yes." His matter-of-fact assent caused poor Toni a pang. "But I think I shall have to borrow Miss Loder from the office for a few weeks. She is used to the job, you know. She told me she had once taken down an eighty-thousand-word book, typed it, and seen it through the press, because the author was nearly blind. So she would really know all about the work."

"Yes." Toni wondered, dully, why the sunshine which poured over her held no warmth to-day.

"Well, I'll drop a line to Barry and ask him if he can spare her for a bit. There's a rather smart typist in one of the other rooms could take her place, and I might not want her for very long. As far as the book itself is concerned, I can't work fast enough to get it all done."

"Yes." Sitting there, repeating the word, parrot-wise, Toni looked very forlorn; and something in her attitude struck Owen with a perhaps exaggerated feeling of remorse.

"Well, that's settled," he said cheerfully, "and after this you needn't lose your roses sitting indoors so much. I'll tell you what—let's have a day off, shall we?"

She nodded, hoping he would not see the tears in her eyes.

"Right. We'll have the car—Fletcher will have to drive—and go for a good long run into the country. We'll have lunch out and get back for dinner. You'll like that?"

"Very much." She rose. "I'll go and get ready, shall I?"

"Yes. We'll start at once. By Jove, I shall enjoy a holiday myself!"

Throughout the day Owen surrounded Toni with an atmosphere of kindness which he trusted might dispel the soreness he guessed she was experiencing; but somehow he failed in his object.

Although the day was superb, a still, golden August day, when the summer seemed to pause, arrested in its flight by the fulness of perfection to which it had brought the land, neither Owen nor Toni was sorry to return to Greenriver. As the car stopped in front of the door Toni cast a rather wistful look at the jasmine-covered old house she had learned to love; and for a moment she felt as though she saw herself as those other women had seen her—the ignorant, frivolous, common little person whom Owen had married out of pique.

Never in all her life had Toni felt so humble as on this evening, when she entered the house which was her home. What had she in common with the beautiful old hall, with the broad staircase leading to the spacious gallery, lighted now by the Ten Little Ladies, whose light pierced the gloom like so many kindly little stars?

The pictures, the bowls of roses, all the inanimate things she had grown to look upon as friends—it seemed to her to-night that they looked coldly to her, resenting her presence as an interloper; and in one queer, horrible flash of insight Toni seemed to visualize the woman who should have been the chÂtelaine of Greenriver—a tall, dignified, beautiful woman, with the bearing of a princess....

"What's the matter, dear?" Owen had seen her shiver. "Are you cold? Yet it's a warm night."

"No, thank you, I'm not cold." She spoke gently. "I—I think I'm a little tired."

She picked up a brown envelope from the table.

"Look, Owen, here's a telegram for you."

"So there is. Open it for me, will you, dear?"

She did so and handed him the flimsy paper. His eyes brightened as he read.

"Good old Barry! He's wasted no time—Miss Loder will come down to-morrow by the ten o'clock train. I must send the car."

He went out and spoke to the chauffeur, returning to say: "Will you arrange for some lunch to be sent up every day, Toni? She can get off by the four train, I daresay, and that will give us a good long time for work."

"I will see to it," Toni said quietly.

"Thanks, dear. Let me see, there's half an hour before dinner. I might go and put everything in order as far as we've gone, so that we can start fair. I mustn't waste her time when she gets here."

"No. Of course not."

Although she tried to speak casually, a note in her voice struck Owen rather unpleasantly. He looked at her sharply in the lamplight; and something in her child-like attitude, as she stood motionless, her hands hanging by her sides, gave him a sudden twinge of something like reproach.

He looked round quickly. They were alone, and acting on impulse Owen stooped, and putting his left hand under her chin, tilted her face upwards until their eyes met.

"Come, Toni." He had seen the tears in those wistful eyes of hers. "What's the matter? You are not hurt about the work, are you? If you would rather not have the woman, say so, and we will go on as we have been doing. It will get easier in time."

"Oh no!" Toni spoke quickly, though her lips quivered. "Indeed I'm not hurt. I—I'm sorry I'm such a fool. I'm only a hindrance to you instead of a help."

Although he had no conception of the wound dealt to her by two thoughtless women, Owen realized that she was in earnest; that she understood, and regretted, her failure to give him the help he needed; and for perhaps the first time since his marriage Owen pitied his wife sincerely. After all, it was he, not she, who was to blame; and being still in the dark, Owen thanked God that at least she had no idea he had married her without giving her the love she had had a right to expect.

"Hush, Toni dear." He held her to him with his sound arm. "After all, I want you for my wife, not my typist. Miss Loder may be able to do the work I want done better than you, because she's used to it; but you're my wife, Toni, and what does anything else matter?"

He did not know whether his words brought her any comfort. She smiled, faintly, and returned the kiss he gave her before he let her go; but when she was alone in her quiet room Toni wept till she could weep no more.

She hated Miss Loder from the first.

Her self-possessed manner, her cool, grey eyes, above all the suggestion of competency which lurked in every line of her trim, well-tailored figure, all alike filled Toni with a sharp sense of resentment which she felt to be both childish and stupid.

Without perhaps intending it, Miss Loder conveyed a sense of superiority. Toni was made to feel that this newcomer knew just why she had been sent for—understood that it was in reality to Toni's incapacity that she owed her present position; and Toni felt, with a miserable intensity, that Miss Loder looked upon her as some brilliant sixth-form girl would survey a kindergarten child, with a kindly, half-amused, half-contemptuous tolerance.

Never had Toni so desperately longed to be clever as during that first week of Miss Loder's secretaryship; and never had she felt herself to be so ignorant, so childish, so futile a companion for a man like Owen.

At first Miss Loder had eaten her lunch in solitude. It was Toni's suggestion that she should join them in the dining-room, and Owen, supposing that Toni felt it a little discourteous to condemn the other woman to a lonely meal, agreed cordially to the plan.

Over her luncheon Miss Loder laid aside her rather scholastic, manner, and talked pleasantly in a quite refreshingly frivolous way; but try as she might Toni never felt at ease in her presence; and gradually she dropped out of the conversation until she sat for the greater part of the meal in silence.

Owen, absorbed in his book, did not notice her taciturnity, and though he responded politely to Miss Loder's chatter, it was evident he was not captivated by her undoubted social gifts to the extent of forgetting the purpose of her presence.

As for Miss Loder, Toni had guessed her attitude towards Mr. Rose's wife correctly enough. To the clever, highly-trained mind of the Girton girl Toni's whole personality was so appallingly feeble.

"The brains of a hen, and the soul, probably, of a chorus-girl." So Miss Loder, quite unjustly, summed up Toni. "Married the man to get out of a life of drudgery, I expect, and is as much of a companion to her husband as a pretty little Persian cat would be. Why will these nice men marry such nonentities, I wonder? She is bound to be a drag on him all her days."

For all her shrewdness Miss Loder never dreamed that her estimation of Toni was clearly evident to the person concerned. In her fatally orderly mind Toni was classified as a "type"—the type of the pretty, useless, childish wife; and Miss Loder never looked for any variation of the type when once she had labelled the specimen.

That his now secretary did her work admirably Owen realized with intense gratitude. For all her modern self-assertiveness Miss Loder was clever enough to realize that in Owen she had met her intellectual master; and being at heart a veritable woman she never attempted to challenge the supremacy of the masculine mind.

The work progressed quickly; and gradually, as the fascination of his work grew upon him, Owen became more and more absorbed in his book. He was always planning some incident, rehearsing, mentally, some situation or some telling dialogue; and the outer life around him receded into a dim and misty distance, in which Toni's pathetic little figure was almost lost.

Toni did not give in easily. She made feeble tentative attempts to share his author's rapture. She asked him timid little questions, to which he gave smilingly vague answers; and once she even suggested that he should read to her the chapters he had already finished.

Owen refused, quite gently, but inexorably; and Toni felt a miserable certainty that he did not think her capable of understanding or appreciating his work.

The day this happened she ordered the car and went for a long and solitary excursion into the country. Of late she had not used the car, preferring to hang wretchedly about the house and garden, half-resenting the absorption of the two workers shut up in the library, not daring to interrupt their toil, yet longing, vaguely, for the courage to enter boldly and claim her share of the mutual labour.

But to-day she felt that she could stand the house no longer. A great desire was upon her for the sunny places of the earth, and in her present mood the slow, gliding traffic of the river held for her no attraction. She longed for the swift, exhilarating rush through the air which, the car would give her; and Fletcher took her orders with alacrity.

"A long round—yes, ma'am." He deliberated. "It's not three yet, and I suppose you don't care to be 'ome much before dinner-time?"

"No, I want to be out for hours," she said feverishly, and Fletcher was only too pleased to oblige her.

Even Toni's depression could not hold beneath the tonic of that glorious ride. It was a splendid September day, when the country lay bathed in floods of rolling sunshine, and there was just enough bite in the air to set the blood racing through one's veins, and bring the sparkle to one's eyes.

Toni sat upright in the car, gazing out over the golden fields to the misty hills beyond, and everything she saw filled her with the true and vivid happiness which the lover of the "sweet things" of the earth knows so well.

A field of yellow corn ablaze with scarlet poppies, a group of trees among which the copper beech blazed with a glory as of the sunset, a glimpse of a wide common all aflame with sweet-scented gorse ... now and again a hint of the river flashing and sparkling beneath the shining sky—Toni, the ignorant, despised Toni, knew how to appreciate the glories of the earth as the brilliant Millicent Loder could never do.

On and on they rushed. Fletcher, who in common with the other servants respected Owen and adored Toni, was only too glad to please his young mistress by taking her far afield; and he utilized his wide knowledge of the countryside in her service, treating Toni indeed to such a panorama of the fertile country as she had never yet been privileged to behold.

They were running through a little village on their homeward way when a tyre burst with a loud report; and Fletcher pulled up with an expression of dismay.

"I'm sorry, ma'am—I shall have to delay you a bit while I put on a new tyre." He looked round him rather doubtfully. "I suppose you wouldn't care to take a cup of tea while I put it right?"

"Mrs. Rose!" A cyclist had halted by the car, and looking up Toni saw Herrick standing beside her. "Had an accident? Nothing serious, I hope."

"Tyre burst, sir," announced the chauffeur, who with the rest of the village looked upon the shabby inhabitant of the Hope House as a harmless eccentric. "I was just asking my mistress if she would care to have some tea while I repair it."

"A capital idea," said Herrick, whose amused eyes saw quite well the chauffeur's estimate of him. "Mrs. Rose, may I take you to get some tea? One of these cottages will supply it, I daresay—or there is quite a decent little inn over yonder."

"Thanks very much." Toni was thirsty, and she liked Herrick. "I'd love some tea—if you'll have some too."

"To be sure I will." He propped his bicycle carelessly against a fence and opened the door of the car. "Which shall we try? A cottage or the inn?"

In the end they decided for the inn; and leaving Fletcher to set to work, Herrick escorted Toni down the village street to the door of the old-fashioned inn which called itself, rather ambiguously, the "Cock and Bottle."

The landlady, who spoke with a Northern burr which made, Herrick glance curiously at her, came bustling into the flagged passage to greet them, and when she had taken their order for tea she ushered them into the parlour with a hospitable smile.

"I'll fetch tea in a minute," said she, "t' kettle's boilin' an' I've a cake on the griddle just about fit."

When she had gone Toni turned two perplexed eyes on Herrick.

"Mr. Herrick, what does she mean? Does the cake fit the griddle, or what?"

Herrick laughed lustily.

"Oh, you Londoner—you poor little Southern kid! Haven't you ever been in Yorkshire—good old Yarkshire, as they call it—the country of tykes and gees and men that can't be beat?"

"Oh, is that Yorkshire!" Toni coloured with excitement. "Mr. Herrick, my father came from there! All his people did—but they're dead now, and I've never been North!"

"Really?" He was to the full as much interested in the coincidence as she. "Well, our good landlady is certainly a Yorkshire woman—and I hope she'll give us a real Yorkshire tea!"

His hope was fulfilled when the buxom Mrs. Spencer returned, which she speedily did. She carried a tray laden not only with cups and saucers, but with an assortment of cakes which would have rejoiced the heart of a Yorkshire child.

"Them's crud cheesecakes," said she, beaming on the pair, "an' these fat rascals is to-day's bake—and the griddle cakes an' all." She laid the table deftly. "I'll fetch the tea-pot and t' cream, and then ye can help yersens."

When she put down the tea-pot, however, Herrick detained her with a question.

"You don't belong to these parts, Mrs. Spencer?"

"No, sir." She shook her head blithely. "I'm a Yorkshire woman, praise the pigs! Married a South-country man, I did—and often wished as I 'adn't—when 'e wur alive, that's to say."

"Since his demise you've altered your mind?"

"Well, he left me pretty well provided for," returned the late Spencer's widow comfortably, "an' I won't say as 'e wur an out-an-out bad 'usband. But somehow I can't abide South-country folk."

"They say we Yorkshire tykes are a rough lot," said Herrick, smiling, and she took up the challenge at once.

"Oh, that's all my eye and Betty Martin," she returned in the vernacular of her youth, "I grant you there's a lot of soft-sawder about the fellers down here, but they ain't in it wi' us up in Yorkshire."

"Where do you come from, Mrs. Spencer? I'm a dalesman myself; Wensleydale's my native land."

"I'm from Thirsk, sir. My mother was washerwoman to lots of the gentry round, and my people still lives there, in a cottage on the Green."

"Ah, I know Thirsk—fine old church there, one of the finest in the North Riding. You've never been there, Mrs. Rose?" He turned to include Toni in the conversation, and found her wide-eyed and flushed with excitement.

"Mr. Herrick, my people lived near Thirsk—in a farm at Feliskirk in the hills. Oh, do you think she knew them?"

Mrs. Spencer, who had hitherto overlooked Toni, turned to her in surprise.

"If you'll tell me the name, miss—ma'am. We knew most of t' people in t' neighbourhood."

"Gibbs—their name was Gibbs." She spoke breathlessly. "The house was called the Green Farm. Oh, do you know anything about them?"

"Gibbs? The Green Farm?" Mrs. Spencer stared incredulously. "Why, I knew old Gregory Gibbs well—and a fine old fellow he was too. And Fred and Roger—why, I knew 'em both. They used to come down into t' town on market days with their dad, and a pair of jolly little lads they were an' all—especially Roger."

"Roger was my father," said Toni quietly, and Mrs. Spencer uttered an exclamation.

"You don't say! But Roger, he ran away—leastways e went off to furrin parts and we 'eard as 'ow 'e'd married an Heyetalian young lady out there. And you are really Roger Gibbs' bairn?"

"Yes; he married my mother—an Italian girl—in Naples. I was born there. But they're both dead now," said Toni sadly.

"Oh, I'm sorry to 'ear that!" Mrs. Spencer spoke sincerely. "To think as I should live to see young Roger's lass 'ere in my 'ouse! You don't favour the Gibbs, miss, if I may say so."

"No, Mrs. Rose is more like her mother's people, I expect," said Herrick, noticing as he spoke how pale Toni looked now that the flush of excitement had died away. "But if she has never been to Yorkshire, at least she can taste her native cakes, eh, Mrs. Spencer?"

Thus reminded of her duties Mrs. Spencer bustled away to find some "preserve," which was only brought out for specially honoured guests; and Toni took the seat Herrick placed for her at the table.

"You'll pour out for us? That's right. I'm afraid our good landlady will want to stay and chatter! Do you mind?"

"Oh, no—do let her stay and talk about my people!" pleaded Toni, and this Mrs. Spencer was very ready to do.

Standing by the table, resting her empty tray on her ample hip, she poured forth a stream of disjointed memories to which Toni listened eagerly. Mrs. Spencer, it seemed, had had an aunt living in the village with the Gibbs; and as a child she had often stayed there; so that she had known Toni's father well.

"Of course, t' Gibbs were always a cut above us," she owned frankly. "My feyther was a foundry hand till he died, and wasn't too steady neither; and when 'e died my mother took in washing. There was a trick young Roger once played 'er about a washing-basket ... what was it now?" She paused to meditate. "Nay, I can't think on this minute ... but she allus said as 'e wur nowt but a bowdekite!" She laughed, jollily, at the recollection, and pressed a cheesecake on Toni with a heartiness there was no resisting.

Thanks to her chatter time flew; and Herrick was just beginning to think of the waiting chauffeur, when there was a sudden spatter of rain against the window panes; and looking out he saw that while they had been talking a storm had been brewing.

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little, Mrs. Rose!" He pointed to the rain, now streaming down in a steady torrent. "It won't be more than a shower, I daresay."

"Oh, and Fletcher's outside in it." Toni put down her cup. "Mr. Herrick, could I tell him to come inside and have some tea, do you think? We've been out for hours, you know."

"Certainly. I'll see about it."

He went out and brought in the chauffeur, delivering him over to Mrs. Spencer's good offices; and then returned to find Toni sitting rather disconsolately by the window, looking out at the rain as it splashed into the quickly-forming puddles in the village street.

The sudden storm, the silence which fell after Mrs. Spencer's departure, or the early-falling dusk, had brought back all her misery to Toni's mind, banishing in a flash all her recent joyful animation; and when, after observing her for a moment, Herrick came forward, he saw that a blight had fallen over her late gaiety.

She did not hear his step—thought, perhaps, that he had stayed to speak to the chauffeur or chat with the landlady; and all at once such a sense of bitter desolation swept over Toni that she began to cry softly to herself in the dusk.

Instantly Herrick began to back noiselessly towards the door; but Fate, or perhaps a malignant Boo-Boo, pushed a footstool in his path, over which he stumbled with an involuntary ejaculation.

Startled, Toni turned round and saw him; and cursing his own clumsiness, Herrick judged it best to come forward openly.

"Your man is having some tea, under Mrs. Spencer's kindly auspices." He smiled. "It seems she 'don't reckon nowt' to our combined appetites, so I hope Fletcher will make up for our shortcomings."

He sat down in the low window seat, not far from Toni, and with a smile asked permission to smoke.

"Of course—please do." She spoke indifferently.

"Your husband isn't an inveterate smoker—like me?" He lighted a cigarette gratefully. "I thought most literary men were slaves to tobacco."

"I think Owen smokes a good deal," she said. "And especially now that he is working so hard. Miss Loder is quite shocked at his cigarettes."

"Miss Loder?" The question slipped out before he had time to reflect.

"My husband's secretary." She broke off abruptly, as though unwilling to say more. Then a great flood of bitterness rolled over her spirit, at the memory of her own failure; and mingled with it came a sore envy and distrust of the clear-eyed, capable woman who had supplanted her. Together, the two proved irresistible; and with an almost child-like instinct to confide in the man whom she felt to be trustworthy, Toni turned to Herrick and poured forth her sad little story of disappointment and bitter disillusionment.

Out it all came, her desire to help her husband, and the dread awakening to the fact of her own incompetency. Herrick, listening, realized, as perhaps Owen could not have done, what a blow to Toni's hopes the failure of the experiment had been; and remembering her earlier confidences, when she had appealed to him to reverse the judgment passed upon her by two cruel women, he began to wonder whether Toni would ever find any happiness in the life which had once looked so glorious to her youthful eyes.

He said very little till she had finished, though now and again, a quiet question made clear some point involved by her own incoherency; and from the bottom of his heart he pitied the girl who was beginning to realize that though she might be the wife of the man she loved, she would never be his real companion and helpmate until she could attain something nearer to the high standard of perfection for which he looked.

"This Miss Loder—you like her?"

"I believe—sometimes—I almost hate her," said Toni drearily. "She is everything I am not, you see. She is clever, well-educated, amusing. I think I hate women who tell amusing stories," she added vindictively, biting her lip with her strong little teeth.

"But she is not personally objectionable to you?" Herrick wished to hear, if possible, how she treated her employer's wife.

"No—at least she doesn't mean to be," said Toni, striving to speak fairly. "But I know she thinks I am a fool, and pities Owen for having married me. I believe she thinks I ought never to speak to Owen, never ask him any questions about the book. She was quite—short—with me yesterday because I went in to speak to Owen during the afternoon!"

"Oh, but that's absurd!" Herrick felt a quite unreasonable dislike for the superior Miss Loder. "After all you are his wife—she is only his secretary—and husbands and wives have a claim on each other which no sane person would deny."

"Yes." She did not look convinced, and he tried again.

"Don't forget, will you, that a wife holds an absolutely unique position. She is the one person in the world to whom the man is answerable for his actions, just as she is answerable to him for her own; and if she is—hurt—or annoyed by any proceeding on the part of her husband, she has a perfect right to express her wishes on the subject."

"You mean I have a right to ask Owen to send away Miss Loder?" Toni was always direct in her statements. "I suppose I have—if I wanted to—but I don't. It isn't Miss Loder who makes me miserable. It's the whole hopeless situation."

Her words startled him.

"Not hopeless, Mrs. Rose!"

"Why not?" In her eyes he read again that hint of a tortured woman soul which he had glimpsed before. "It isn't very hopeful, is it? My husband wants help and sympathy, which I cannot give him; and yet because he married me he can't ask anyone else for it except in a business way."

"But—you don't mean:——" Herrick paused, aghast at the horrible idea her words had conjured up; and Toni, with the new quickness which suffering was teaching her, hastened to reassure him.

"Oh, I don't mean he wants to marry any other woman," she said proudly. "I am his wife—unfortunately for him, perhaps, but he will always be true to me. Besides, Miss Loder isn't that sort," she added, rather vaguely.

"Then what——"

"Oh, you don't understand!" Her sad voice robbed the words of all petulance. "Though you are most awfully kind—and clever—you see you aren't married, Mr. Herrick, and that makes a difference."

"Who told you I was not married?" His tone was studiously quiet, yet the girl looked at him quickly, wonderingly.

"I don't think anyone told me—but I thought you weren't." She hesitated, then went on hurriedly. "I used to think that was why you were so—so sad. I mean—oh, I know you laugh and talk and are kind, but somehow I felt all the time there was a sadness underneath...."

She broke off, roused from thoughts of her own trouble by the fear that she had given him pain; and for a moment neither spoke.

Then, with a glance at the window, down whose panes the rain was still streaming, Herrick took a sudden resolution.

Perhaps if he told this girl the story of his own marriage, opened before her eyes the book on whose pages was inscribed so tragic a history, she might take courage anew, realizing that her own pitiful little story held no hint, at least, of shame or disgrace, no hint of a mutual disillusionment which only death could adjust.

He rose abruptly.

"I'll just speak to your man," he said. "I don't think it would be wise to start yet, but I'll see what he says, shall I?"

She let him go, wondering whether her last speech had vexed him; and in a moment he returned.

"Fletcher agrees with me that it will be wise to wait a quarter of an hour," he said; "the rain is not nearly so heavy, and the sky is growing lighter."

"Very well." She spoke listlessly, and his resolve was strengthened. Sitting down on the window seat again, he asked her a question.

"You didn't know I was married? Would you care to hear the story of my marriage? It isn't a very happy story, but it might serve to show you what a different thing your marriage will yet turn out to be."

"I should like to hear what you can tell me," Toni said slowly; and after a moment's hesitation Herrick began the story which he had rightly called unhappy.