repeated to himself, "but he has told too late."

After a morning such as that, an afternoon on a piazza is apt to drag. Of this Roland was conscious. Moreover, he had become aware that his opportunities were now narrowly limited; and presently, as Mrs. Metuchen's imaginings subsided and ceased, he asked the girl whether, when dinner was over, she would care to take a drive.

Protest who may, at heart every woman is a match-maker; and Mrs. Metuchen was not an exception. In addition to this, she liked family-trees, she was in cordial sympathy with good-breeding, and Roland, who possessed both, had, through attentions which women of her age appreciate most, succeeded in detaining her regard. In conversation, whenever Justine happened to be mentioned, she had a habit of extolling that young woman—not beyond her deserts, it is true, but with the attitude of one aware that the girl had done something which she ought to be ashamed of, yet to which no one was permitted to allude. This attitude was due to the fact that she suspected her, and suspected that everyone else suspected her, of an attachment for her cousin Guy. Now Guy Thorold had never appealed to Mrs. Metuchen. He was not prompt with a chair; when she unrolled her little spangle of resonant names he displayed no eagerness in face or look. Such things affect a woman. They ruffle her flounces and belittle her in her own esteem. As a consequence, she disliked Guy Thorold; from the heights of that dislike she was even wont to describe him as Poke—a word she could not have defined had she tried, but which suggested to her all the attributes of that which is stupid and under-bred. Roland, on the other hand, seemed to her the embodiment of just those things which Thorold lacked, and in the hope that he might cut the cousin out she extolled him to her charge in indirect and subtle ways. You young men who read this page mind you of this: if you would succeed in love or war, be considerate of women who are no longer young. They ask but an attention, a moment of your bountiful days, some little act of deference, and in exchange they sound your praises more deftly than ever trumpeter or beat of drums could do.

But because Mrs. Metuchen had an axe of her own to grind was not to her mind a reason why she should countenance a disregard of the Satanic pomps of that which the Western press terms Etiquette. And so it happened that, when Roland asked Justine whether she would care to drive, before the girl could answer, the matron stuck her oar in:

"Surely, Mr. Mistrial, you cannot think Miss Dunellen could go with you alone. Not that I see any impropriety in her doing so, but there is the world."

The world at that moment consisted of a handful of sturdy consumptives impatiently waiting the opening of the dining-room doors. And as Roland considered that world, he mentally explored the stable.

"Of course not," he answered; "if Miss Dunellen cares to go, I will have a dogcart and a groom."

With that sacrifice to conventionality Mrs. Metuchen was content. For Justine to ride unchaperoned was one thing, but driving was another matter. And later on, in the cool of the afternoon, as Roland bowled the girl over the yielding sand, straight to the sunset beyond, he began again on the duo which they had already rehearsed, and when Justine called his attention to the groom, he laughed a little, and well he might. "Don't mind him," he murmured; "he is deaf."

In earlier conversations he had rarely spoken of himself, and, when he had, it had been in that remote fashion which leaves the personal pronoun at the door. There is nothing better qualified to weary the indifferent than the speech in which the I jumps out; and knowing this, he knew too that that very self-effacement before one whose interest is aroused excites that interest to still higher degrees. The Moi seul est haïssable is an old maxim, one that we apprehend more or less to our cost no doubt, and after many a sin of egotism; but when it is learned by rote, few others serve us in better stead. In Roland's relations with Justine thus far it had served him well. It had filled her mind with questions which she did not feel she had the right to ask, and in so filling it had occupied her thoughts with him. It was through arts of this kind that Machiavelli earned his fame.

But at present circumstances had changed. She had placed her hand in his; she had avowed her love. The I could now appear; its welcome was assured. And as they drove along the sand-hills she told him of herself, and drew out confidences in exchange. And such confidences! Had the groom not been deaf they might have given him food for thought. But they must have satisfied Justine, for when they reached the hotel again her eyes were so full of meaning that, had Mrs. Metuchen met her in a pantry instead of on the verandah, she could have seen unspectacled that the girl was fairly intoxicated—drunk with that headiest cup of love which is brewed not by the contact of two epiderms, but through communion of spirit and unison of heart.

That evening, when supper was done, Mrs. Metuchen, to whom any breath of night was synonymous with miasmas and microbes, settled herself in the parlor, and in the company of her friends from School Lane discussed that inexhaustible topic—Who Was and Who Was Not.

But the verandah, deserted at this hour by the consumptives, had attractions for Justine, for Roland as well; and presently, in a corner of it that leaned to the south, both were seated, and, at the moment, both were dumb. On the horizon, vague now and undiscerned, the peach-blossoms and ochres of sunset had long since disappeared; but from above rained down the light and messages of other worlds; the sky was populous with stars that seemed larger and nearer than they do in the north; Venus in particular shone like a neighborly sun that had strayed afar, and in pursuit of her was a moon, a new one, so slender and yellow you would have said, a feather that a breath might blow away. In the air were the same inviting odors, the scent of heliotrope and of violets, the invocations of the woodlands, the whispers of the pines. The musicians had been hushed, or else dismissed, for no sound came from them that night.