"Then let us skirt in and out, on the edge of the plantation, so that Mr. Gilroy may have the pleasure of seeing my frock from time to time."

"I'm your man."

"No, not that way—this. There, I'm sure he must have seen me then."

"He must."

"It's time we went back; but this will have done him all the good in the world," said Naomi.

"It's a pity you haven't a manager whom you can respect and like," the piano-tuner remarked.

Naomi started. She also stopped to lace up her shoe, which necessitated the withdrawal of her hand from the piano-tuner's arm; and she did not replace it.

"Oh, but I do like him, Mr. Engelhardt," she explained as she stooped. "I like Mr. Gilroy very much; I have known him all my life, you know. However, that's just where the disadvantage comes in—he's too much inclined to domineer. But don't you run away with the idea that I dislike him; that would never do at all."

The piano-tuner felt too small to apologize. He had made a deadly mistake—so bad a one that she would take his arm no[Pg 23] more. He looked up at the moon with miserable eyes, and his brain teemed with bitter self-upbraiding thoughts. His bitterness was egregiously beyond the mark; but that was this young man's weakness. He would condemn himself to execution for the pettiest sin. So ashamed was he now that he dared not even offer her his hand when they got back to the veranda, and she consigned him to the boy in spectacles, who then showed him his room in the barracks. And his mistake kept him awake more than half that night; it was only in the gray morning he found consolation in recollecting that although she had declared so many times that she liked Monty Gilroy, she had never once said she respected him.

[Pg 23]

Had he heard a conversation which took place in the station-yard later that night, but only a little later, and while the full moon was in much the same place, the piano-tuner might have gone to sleep instead of lying awake to flagellate his own meek spirit; though it is more likely that he would have lain quietly awake for very joy. The conversation in question was between Naomi Pryse and Montague Gilroy, her manager, and it would scarcely repay a detailed 

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