clearly that that ecstatic woman lifting her eyes and her hands to the benediction of love was Margaret as she existed in eternity; but this was Margaret as she existed in time, as the fifteen years between Monkey Island and this damp day in Ladysmith Road had irreparably made her. Well, I had promised to bring her to him.

She said:

"I'm ready," and against that simple view of her condition I had no argument. But when she paused by the painted drainpipe in the hall and peered under contracted brows for that unveracious tortoiseshell handle, I said hastily:

"Oh, don't trouble about an umbrella."

"I'll maybe need it walking home," she pondered.

"But the car will bring you back."

"Oh, that will be lovely," she said, and laughed nervously, looking very plain. "Do you know, I know the way we're coming together is terrible, but I can't think of a meeting with Chris as anything but a kind of treat. I've got a sort of party feeling now."

As she held the gate open for me she looked back at the house.

"It's a horrid little house, isn't it?" she asked. She evidently desired sanction for a long-suppressed discontent.

"It isn't very nice," I agreed.

"They put cows sometimes into the field at the back," she went on, as if conscientiously counting her blessings. "I like that; but otherwise it isn't much."

"But it's got a very pretty name," I said, laying my hand on the raised metal letters that spelled "Mariposa" across the gate.

"Ah, isn't it!" she exclaimed, with the smile of the inveterate romanticist. "It's Spanish, you know, for butterfly."

Once we were in the automobile, she became a little sullen with shyness, because she felt herself so big and clumsy, her clothes so coarse, against the fine upholstery, the silver vase of Christmas roses, and all the deliberate delicacy of Kitty's car. She was afraid of the chauffeur, as the poor are always afraid of men-servants, and ducked her head when he got out to start the car. To recall her to ease and beauty I told her that though Chris had told me all about their meeting, he knew nothing of their parting, and that I wished very much to hear what had happened.

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