jasmine pergola and came opposite a broad stoep, all hung with baskets of pink geraniums and ferns and pink Japanese lanterns with electric lights inside, and white wicker armchairs and big pink silk cushions and white tables.

It was just like a theatrical scene.

There was an awfully handsome middle-aged woman sitting at a table playing bridge with three elderly men, and someone inside the inner room was playing "Iolanthe."

Everybody yelled, "Hello, Cromer!" and "Cheerio, Cromer!"

A girl suddenly appeared from behind a huge flowering Dorothy Perkins in a white tub, and two or three officers and another girl in a bunchy mauve and silver gown fluttered up from a low pink divan.

They stared at me, in my old mack, with well-bred curiosity, and I thought I looked like someone from the pit wandered on to a musical comedy scene.

The music stopped, and a girl suddenly appeared at the french-windows.

She was perfectly wonderful.

She was awfully fair and tall and slender, and she had blue eyes the exact colour of her georgette gown.

You could have cried over her, she was so lovely; and she had the sort of mouth that made you feel you simply couldn't go away until you had seen it smile.

"Hullo! Cap.," she said; her voice was light and high and sweet, almost as if she were laughing at something.

"I've brought your book back, Grace," he said; and then he took my hand. "Oh, Pam dear," he said—then to the handsome lady at the bridge table, "May I introduce my little fiancée—Miss Burbridge."

I knew then; I just knew by the look in those very blue eyes. I quite understood why Captain Cromer was bitter, why he wanted a fiancée.

He wanted to hit back.

A sort of buzz of talk and teasing broke out all round me, and through it all I detected a vein of surprise.

Grace Gilpin came down the veranda to shake hands. She walked wonderfully—just like an actress on the stage.

"Why, you poor souls!" she said, lightly and gaily, "so it's raining"—and she looked at my old mack; then everybody looked at it.

I felt suddenly as if I wanted to cry.

"I made her put it on," I heard Captain Cromer say. "She is such a foolish little person. She doesn't take half enough care of herself"—and I knew that I could learn to love that man, that I was doing a crazy thing, and I was going to go on with it.

III

When I am with people I feel as if I am a fairy princess taking part in a fairy play, a wonderful and desirable and adorable person. It is a perfectly marvellous feeling; and when I am alone with Cheneston I feel as if he switched the limelight off with an impatient hand, and I was just a plain, shabby, silly kid.

He has bought me an engagement ring—for the six weeks before he goes to the front.

"Let us be as beastly orthodox as possible," he said as he popped it on. "Why don't you look after your nails—you've got decent hands."

"What shall I do with it when——"

"When you write and break off the engagement! Oh! keep it if you like."

It is a platinum set with one glorious ruby, an enormous stone. You could almost warm yourself by the red there is in it.

I love warm things, and glows and twinkles and brightness.

I am waking up. I feel as if I were as covered with shutters as an old anchor with barnacles, and every morning when I wake up I find more shutters opened.

I think Cheneston must be perfectly appallingly rich. He has a villa in Italy, and a little hut in Norway where he stays for the ski-ing season, and the white yacht Mellow Hours in the harbour is his.

It's more fairy tale-y than ever.

Mother and father are delighted at my engagement; but their surprise is rather humiliating, it does make me realise how awfully plain and dull I am.

I haven't any parlour tricks or conversation, my tennis is rotten, I'm sick on the yacht, I swim like a mechanical toy, I haven't the foggiest idea how to play golf, and I'm never sure of my twinkle in jazzing—and Grace Gilpin does all these things absolutely toppingly. She's been trained to do them from quite a little kid.

We seem to do everything in fours—I and Cheneston, and Grace Gilpin and a man called Markham, Walter Markham, who adores her.

Cheneston is sweet to me when we're all together, but when he and I leave the others and are alone sometimes he hardly speaks.

I imagine he is bored.

I do love him so much, every day I seem to love him more and more and more.

I suppose I ought to be ashamed and humiliated to write that down, because I simply bore him to tears; but I'm not, mine isn't a silly love—he's my very, very dear, the most wonderful man I have ever seen or known.

Sometimes people say things that simply wring my heart.

"I suppose you'll get married directly after the war?" the C.O.'s wife said. "Will you live in England?"

"I—I don't know," I answered.

"We shall winter in the South," said Cheneston; he glanced at Grace Gilpin and I knew she was listening. "We shall probably go to Norway for the sports, and spend the rest of the time in England."

"It sounds like a fairy tale," said the C.O.'s wife.

"I think it is," I broke in unexpectedly.

Grace Gilpin turned in her chair and glanced at me. She was lovely; she wore cornflower blue crêpe and white collar and cuffs.

"I think Cheneston would be quite wonderful in the rôle of a fairy prince," she said.

He laughed, rose, and walked away.

Going home he looked at me gravely.

"I hope you're not getting romantic about our engagement. I don't mean anything rotten, child—but all that silly rubbish about fairy tales and fairy princes. I have only five weeks more—then I go to the front."

"Did you care for Grace most frightfully?" I asked boldly.

He looked down at me with slightly puzzled eyes. I can't describe his eyes exactly, they are hazel, and when he is going to laugh they laugh first; and they are hard and honest and straight.

"I thought," he said. "I gave my very soul into her hands, to play with and laugh at—but I don't know. It doesn't hurt so much—as it did. Pam—I gave her everything that was best in me; and she encouraged me, she let me give, and when I had beggared myself—when I cared like hell—she flung my gifts back in my face and laughed. I wanted to humiliate her as she had humiliated me. I'm not a great man, Pam; she ground my pride and my