'I haven't got a list—and there isn't a next. Ted, you mustn't ask me questions. I do that to myself endlessly, and I hate them; there are no answers to most, and those that have answers are scorpions.'

'What questions do you ask yourself? There, I've put my foot in it again! Well, look here, Stella, your school will be the jolliest affair going. You only teach reading, and that game isn't worth the candle. So there I'll be, bright and early, and nothing to learn but to stay with you. But I'll pick up a lot in that way. Why, some time ago I put the stuns on a fellow with just only remembering that the line, "Where is the land to which yon ship must go?" is in one of Wordsworth's sonnets. Oh, he's just a racing fellow! he comes from one of the old swell families in England, but nothing like such a bad lot as Tareling. He's as straight as a die, and never borrows money, and he's quite gone on books, though he took his degree at Oxford. He and another fellow were talking about poetry in the smoking-room after dinner at the club the last time I was in town, and the other fellow asked Dacre, that's his name, where that line came from. I was reading the sporting part of the Australasian, but the words came on me like seeing you unexpectedly, and I looked up and said: "Why, that's from one of Wordsworth's sonnets." By George! they were more astonished than if I had stood on my head. Yes, upon my soul, they both stared as if they had paid a bob to see me! "Why, Ritchie, do you actually read sonnets?" said Dacre. He has written a bookful himself. He is one of those fellows who think that all men write poetry when they are spoony. I could tell him better than that. Do you remember, Stella, one Sunday evening when I was staying from Saturday till Monday at Fairacre? Billy Stein and Herby Lindsay were there, too. Billy knew a fearful lot of German stuff that you were always fond of, and as for poetry, he could spout it by the hour. It was shortly before I left for Strathhaye—I suppose you were fifteen at the time—you used sometimes to get perfectly wild with making fun of one thing or another, and your eyes, and cheeks, and lips all used to make flashes. Oh, you may laugh! but I know what I mean. Your eyes are awfully heavy just now, Stella. Well, you put the four of us in a row—Cuthbert, and me, and the other two—and you wouldn't let us move till we each made some sort of verses. 'Pon my soul, I nearly squirmed my eyes out trying to think of words that sounded alike. When I did get any, the spelling was out, and there was that little beggar Billy making up something as long as my arm about a rose, and a maiden, and a nightingale. But I put the kybosh on him there, for I said there were no nightingales in Australia, and how did we know whether they sang as he said? And you took my side, but I think it was out of pure wickedness. Everyone got finished long before I did, and at the end I could only make up four lines. Oh, I remember them well enough:

'"A lamb's tail

Caught on a rail;

The mother humming,

The crow a-coming."'

Stella laughed again.

'Why, Ted, you are one of the dumb poets? What in the world put that into your head?'

'Oh, don't suppose I made up the adventure. I took it from life. I saw a little lunatic of a lamb caught by his hind end before he was tailed, and if I hadn't taken him to his mother, the old crow would have scooped his optics out in no time. You all objected to "humming." I didn't want the darned sheep to hum; it was you that would have rhyme, and how could you make "bleating" into poetry there? I very nearly got into a scot with Stein, he kept on laughing so much. But then you walked with me up to the Spanish reeds, and showed me the nest of a superb warbler there—domed, I think you called it—and told me how you watched the old mater teaching the young 'uns to fly. And then I made up my mind to ask you if I might write to you. My heart beat so hard I thought it would crack, and you said quite carelessly: "Oh yes, Ted, why shouldn't you?" I couldn't have told why it gave me a lump in the throat the way you spoke. Then I thought, That little wretch Billy will want to write, too, and spin away about nightingales, and the Lord knows what! I never feel such a duffer as I do when I take a pen. I say, Stella, did you ever keep any of my letters?'

'Oh yes, I think so.'

'I expect you've got a nice pile of love-letters by this time? Now, tell me true—are there any of them you like better than mine?'

'No; not one.'

The thought welled up bitterly of the letter she had opened with such insane joy three short days ago. And with this came recollections of the long faithful wooing of her companion—of the devotion she had taken as carelessly as an unset pebble; and yet, was there anything in the world more rare, more precious? These reminiscences of her untroubled girlhood touched a tender chord. She realized that a love which had its roots so far back in the past had a claim on her loyalty. At the worst, it was less humiliating to marry a man without loving him than to love one already married. Ted, watching her face closely, noted its wistful, softening expression.