window-seat comfortably cushioned. Nearly all the furniture was quite
old, dark oak, elaborately carved--writing-table, high-backed chairs, an
old French "armoury" in the corner; but near the hearth there were two
or three deep, modern armchairs of peculiarly restful character, covered
with exquisite flowered chintzes.

This vision deepened. I started. The door of the quiet room had suddenly
opened, and, humming a gay little French air, a young girl had
entered--fresh, exquisite, like a breath of early Springtime itself in
the midst of Winter. With her deep eyes, so soft and brown, her skin of
a healthy olive pallor, the cheeks just flushed with crimson, and her
nimbus of light brown hair through which the golden threads strayed so
charmingly, she made a perfect picture standing there in her long gown
of sapphire-blue velvet.

The soft contours of her young face were outlined against a tall screen
embroidered gorgeously with silken peacocks, before which she stopped to
lay down upon a small table the sheaf of red and brown and golden
chrysanthemums which she carried in her arms.

My pulses throbbed as they always did in her presence, or when, indeed,
she so much as crossed my daydreams, as at this moment. For this girl
was Dulcie Challoner--the woman who was fast becoming the one woman in
the world to me, and thus had I seen her enter that very room when last
I had spent a week-end at Holt Manor, four miles from the little village
of Holt Stacey--and that happened to have been only three weeks from the
present moment.

The taxi stopped abruptly, shattering my dreams. We had reached the
club. Some letters were awaiting me. My spirits rose as I recognized the