while going to sleep again. What occurred to lead up to the trespass was swept away as having occurred while the owner was still asleep; no amount of explanation as to why the young man was in his back garden was of any avail; no suggestions as to how he was to get out of it had any effect; and the argument might have continued until the 4.42 train from York to Spaborough had left the station, if in some inner room a child's voice had not begun to sing to the accompaniment of a harmonium:

"Aye, you silly little fool, that's right! Sing that now! It's a pity your dad doesn't live on a green hill without a city wall, and not in York."

The young man, who by this time had been rendered as argumentative as the owner, remarked that 'without' meant 'outside.'

"What's it matter what it means, if there wasn't a city wall?" retorted the owner, and vanished from the window before the young man could reply. From inside one of the rooms there was a fresh murmur of argument, which lasted until a noise between a moan and a thud was followed by a silence faintly broken by sobs. The slamming down of the lid of the harmonium had evidently relieved the feelings of the man in shirt sleeves, for when presently he came out into the garden and found himself at close quarters with the intruder, he became genial and talkative, and began to point out the superiority of his dahlias.

"I reckon they're grand, I do," he said. "Like cauliflowers. Only, of course, cauliflowers wouldn't have the colour, would they?"

"Not if they were fresh," the young man agreed.

And then he began flatteringly to smell one of the dahlias. He seemed to be attributing to the flower as much importance as he would have attributed to a baby; it was easier to deal with a dahlia, because the dahlia did not dribble, although had it really been a baby, its mother would have been much more annoyed at its being smelt like this than was the man in shirt sleeves, who laughed and said:

"I wouldn't bother about the smell if I was you. Dahlia's don't have any smell. Size is what a dahlia's for."

"No, I was thinking it was a rose," the young man explained apologetically. The incident which had begun so rudely was ended, and except for the unseen child practising its little hymn, was ended harmoniously. The young man was taken through the house and conducted along the street as far as the next ingress to the walls. When he met Jasmine coming towards him, he felt as if he had known her for a long time, and that they were meeting like this by appointment.

"Well, that's finished," said the young man, after Jasmine had put the letters safely back in her bag. He eyed for a moment her black clothes.

"I suppose you're going to Sunday-school and all that?" he ventured.

"No, I'm just walking round the walls."

"Curious coincidence! So was I."

"Waiting for a train," she went on.

"Still more curious! So am I."

"Waiting for the 4.42."

"The final touch!" he cried. "So am I. Let's wait in unison."

They moved across to a circular bench set in an embrasure of the walls, overgrown here with ivy from which the sun drew forth a faint dusty scent. On this bench they sat down to exchange more coincidences. To begin with, they discovered that they were both going to Spaborough; soon afterward that they were both going to stay with uncles; and, as if this were not enough, that both these uncles were baronets, which even with the abnormal increase of baronets lately was, as the young man said, the most remarkable coincidence of all.

"And what's your name?" Jasmine asked.

"Harry."

She felt like somebody who had been offered as a present an object in which nothing but politeness had led her to express an interest.

"I meant your other name," she said quickly, rejecting as it were the offer of the more intimate first name.

"Vibart. My uncle is Sir John Vibart."

"Of course, how stupid of me," Jasmine murmured with a blush. "My name's Grant, of course," she hastened to add.

"Sir Hector Grant," the young man went on musingly. "Isn't he some kind of a doctor?"

"A nerve specialist," said Jasmine.

"I know," said the young man in accents that combined wisdom with sympathy.

The discovery of the baronets had removed the last trace of awkwardness which, easy though his manners were, was more perceptible in Mr. Vibart than in Jasmine, who in Sirene had never had much impressed upon her the sacred character of the introduction.

"I shall come and call on you at Spaborough," he vowed.

"Of course," she agreed; people called with much less excuse than this in Sirene.

"We might do some sailing."

She clapped her hands with such spontaneous pleasure of anticipation that Mr. Vibart remarked how easy it was to see that she had lived abroad. But almost before the echo of her pleasure had died away her eyes had filled with tears, for she was thinking how heartless it was of her to rejoice at the prospect of sailing when it was sailing that had caused her father's death. Anxious not to hurt Mr. Vibart's feelings, Jasmine began to explain breathlessly why she was looking so sad. The young man was silent for a minute when she stopped; then, weighing his words in solemn deliberation, he said:

"And, of course, that's why you're wearing black."

Jasmine nodded.

"I've brought with me all that were left of father's pictures. For presents, you know." She sighed.

"I know," said the young man wisely. He had in his own valise a cigar-holder for Sir John Vibart, the expense of procuring which he hoped would be more than covered by a parting cheque.

"And I should like to show them to you," Jasmine went on. "Perhaps we could get one out and look at it in the train."

"Hadn't we better wait until I come and call?" he suggested. "It's not fair to look at things in the train. Trains wobble so, don't they?"

Conversation about Sholto Grant's pictures passed easily into conversation about Jasmine's mother, because nearly all the pictures had been of her.

"She was a beautiful contadina, you know," Jasmine shyly told him.

Mr. Vibart, who supposed that her shyness was due to an attempt to avoid giving an impression of snobbishness in thus announcing the nobility of her ancestry, asked of what she was contadina. Jasmine, delighted at his mistake, laughed gaily.

"Contadina means country girl. Her name was Gelsomina, and she was the most beautiful girl in the island. Everybody wanted to paint her."

Mr. Vibart, struggling in the gulf between a baronet's niece and an artist's model had nothing to say, but he made up his mind to ask his uncle something about Italy. It was always difficult to find anything to talk about with the old gentleman; Italy as a topic ought to last through the better part of two bottles of Burgundy.

"And what's your name?" he asked at last.

"I was called after my mother."

"Oh, you were? Well, would you mind telling me your mother's name again, because I lost the last dozen letters?"

"Gelsomina—only I was always called Jasmine, which is the English for it."

As she spoke, all the bells in York began to ring at once, from the mastiff booming in York Minster to the rusty little cur yapping in a Methodist chapel close to where they were sitting, and with such gathering insistence in their clamour as to destroy the pleasure of these sunlit reminiscences.

"I suppose we ought to have a look at the Minster," Mr. Vibart suggested in the tone of voice in which he would have announced that he must open the door to a pertinacious caller. "Of course I'm not exactly dressed for Sunday afternoon service, but you're all right. Black's always all right for