"You know Dorman very well, don't you? I want to show you something I have bought for him. Oh, it's nothing--but do you think he will like it?"
She was simple and direct in her manner, with more of the comrade than the woman. She showed Groome a gold cigarette-case.
"Of course it will do. But you have already made him a better wedding-gift than that," said Groome.
"I?" Her forehead puckered in a frown. "What gift?"
"A very remarkable gift of insight, which he never had before."
She coloured a little with pleasure, and her eyes and her voice softened together.
"I am very glad," she answered. "One takes a great deal. It is pleasant to give something in return."
Dorman Royle and Ina Fayle were duly married towards the end of the month, and began their life together in the house which Groome had lent them.
It stood on the top of a hill amongst bare uplands above the valley of the Thames, in a garden of roses and green lawns. But the house was new, and the trees about it small and of Groome's own planting, so that every whisper of wind became a breeze up there, and whistled about the windows. On the other hand, if the wind was still there was nowhere a place more quiet, and the slightest sound which would never have been heard in a street rang out loud with the presumption of a boast. Especially this was so at night. The roar of the great trains racing down to the west cleft the air like thunder; yet your eyes could only see far away down in the river-valley, a tiny line of bright lights winking amongst the trees. In this spot they stayed for a week, and then Ina showed her husband a telegram summoning her to the bedside of her mother.
"It's not very serious, as you see," she said. "But she wants me, and I think that for a day or two I must go."