girl was so herself, somehow. But it had not occurred to him that he could be the man.

Now, probably, he would never see the Hallams again. Mrs. Hallam, of course, had said they must meet soon in London, but every one always said that and it was five weeks now since his return. He had not, naturally, ever written.

Of course—there was another thrill in this idea—he could go down to Devonshire again with any false excuse trumped up; but even as this came into his head, his fatally quick fancy, over-exercised, saw him proposing to Miss Hallam, pouring out the sentimental stuff that a love-scene demanded; perhaps—who knows?—even feeling bound to kneel in the manner beloved of conventional romance!

Then, with a swift gesture, he suddenly drained his whisky and soda to its dregs, put the glass down jauntily as men do on the stage, and walked, feeling younger than for ten whole years, to his writing-desk. He gave a happy laugh as he took out some paper.

For he had got a great idea. He was going to propose to Miss Hallam on paper! He was going to write it all down and see if it looked awful rubbish.... He was enjoying himself to-night in a quite new way.

"DEAR MISS HALLAM," he began and added "My" in front. Then as he saw the meaning that might bear he laughed again. He knew it was not right just now to laugh, and marked it as an interesting fact. Then, nervous of detection, he took a new sheet and started—

"MY DEAR MISS HALLAM,

"You will be surprised to hear from me.

"The fact of the matter is—I find myself getting very bald now that I really have to use my pen for something that matters!—I have been thinking a lot of my jolly days in Devonshire, the tennis, the sea-walks, the picnics, everything with all of you, and (if I'm allowed to say it) especially with you yourself."

Here he leant back and read what he had written. It was not literature but he felt satisfied. He took up his pen again and wrote—

"I don't know that it's usual, but I am rather reserved and not too romantic, so that I am writing to ask whether you could think of being my wife. There has never been any one in my whole life of whom I have thought as I have thought of you these last five weeks. I could never tell you how I feel in words, and I see now that I can't on paper, but if you think in any way that you could grow fond of me, I am convinced that we could be immensely happy. I don't know that I have much to offer you; but if you talk to your mother about this, as no doubt you will, you must assure her that I can give you a comfortable home and that I hope, as the years go by, to make myself something of a name.

"I will say no more now. I shouldn't have dared say so much, if I had not thought that we got on rather well last month, and that if you did not welcome this letter, you would at any rate be able to forgive it.

"Yours,
    "HUBERT BRETT."

It was not certainly at all like any of the love-letters that he had written in fiction or read in the police-reports; but he had not inwardly approved of either. This seemed to him quite adequate. She was the sort of girl who wouldn't care for sentiment. He honestly believed she would write back sensibly and just say "Yes."

It is to be remarked that no question remained as to posting the letter or not, so soon as it was finished. He had begun it to see how it looked: now he felt that it was something fated. He must see what happened. Without waiting even to put on a hat, he hurried out to an adjacent pillar-box and dropped the letter in with hardly more emotion than if it had been an ordinary bill.

Going up to bed, without repentance for the night's wild work, and in fact oddly calm for any one in his position, he heard a curious noise inside his sister's room.

He stopped and listened at the door.

She was obviously sobbing.

Hubert suddenly felt softened towards her. So she cared, after all! She felt the separation after these long years!

Had he sometimes wronged her? Had he been impatient? Was she really fond of him; trying to consult his wishes and not to irritate him? Was he growing selfish?...

He very nearly tapped and went in to console her. Then he reflected that she almost certainly would engineer another scene, and that always gave him a bad night.

CHAPTER III

"WHY WOMEN WED"

Helena had never thought much about marriage. There was no reason indeed why she should, for she was young and to her it still appeared, like death to a small child, as something she was sure to reach some day but need not worry with just now.

She was, in fact, nineteen, but her ideas were those of nineteen fifty years ago or of fourteen to-day. Devonshire, for one thing, has slept on in its soft air, not much disturbed by any modern turmoil; and for another, Helena's mother had ideas. These, briefly put, consisted in not letting her daughter have any.

It is, however, only human, from Eve downwards, to defy authority and search for knowledge. Helena, knowing that it was her lot to marry, naturally felt some interest in the habit. Whenever she came on allusions to it, she stocked them in her brain, all in a healthy and quite natural way, wondering in an abstract manner whether it would be thus or thus with her. She never dared to talk about it to her mother. She had once mentioned her own hypothetic marriage, only to be told that girls did not speak of such things in fun, and it would be quite time enough when the occasion rose, and had she given the canary its clean water?

Mrs. Hallam was a loving mother with stern theories. Her own childhood had been a season of repression, yet she was satisfied enough with her morals as opposed to those of many round her. She intended, therefore, to repeat the process. She had no patience—this was her favourite expression—with the licence of young girls to-day: the manner in which they read any novel, went to any play. She had no patience with this rubbish about ignorance not being innocence. Of course it was; or if it wasn't, it had very much the same result, and that was everything. Girls read these trashy novels and got a notion that grown men and women spent their whole lives falling in and out of love. They naturally tried it and began flirtation as a sort of duty. If a girl knew nothing, she did not know what to do. If she had no notion what flirtation meant, she clearly couldn't do it—especially if she saw no men till she was safely beyond her teens.

In any case, till she was twenty, Helena had no plays, novels, or man-friends. Her reading was all lives, histories, and comic papers. Her days were spent with relatives or younger friends, when she was not alone.

She grew up an oddly fine tribute to the system, thus underlining the depressing axiom which comes at length to all who study education: that those who are going to be nice will turn out nice, whatever way you train their youth, and much the same about the nasty. She was simple, healthy, buoyant, cheerful, natural; everything that Hubert thought. And who shall blame her if she was a little immature?

Hubert's letter was a real excitement in her cloistered life.

She had enjoyed her meeting with him. Men were a novelty, and to her an author was still that thing of wonder which he appeared to a suburban hostess twenty years ago. She thought him marvellously clever at first sight, and rather alarming. Later, she thought him easy to get on with and amusing. He played tennis well, liked finding crabs, and Mother did not seem to mind them talking. It was quite a jolly change. She finally thought him a dear and missed him when he left for Town.

And now—this letter!

Nothing ever could be less expected. She read it and re-read, not knowing really what she ought to do. She was just as