dreaming of kingdoms round the corner and make the best of such kingdoms as are ours to-day."
The idea took hold of him with force. It fascinated him. He turned his car about. In passing through Mayfair he made a detour to glance at Taborley House. The American Hospital had vacated it. It looked ruined and forlorn. He tried to picture it as it might appear if Maisie were its mistress.
Twenty minutes later he drew up before the retiring little villa with its marigold-tinted curtains. He had by no manner of means decided on his course of action. He could not have told you what he was going to say to Maisie. In this as in so many other ways, he believed himself abnormal. No one had ever told him that ninety-nine out of a hundred married men, if they spoke the truth, would have to confess that they had been unaware thirty seconds before they proposed that they were going to do so; and that the most incredible happening in their lives had been when, thirty seconds later, they had discovered that not only had they proposed, but that they had been riotously accepted.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
SOME PEOPLE FIND THEIR KINGDOMS
I
He was in the act of shutting off his engine when he heard himself accosted. "I beg your pardon, but are you, Mr. Gervis?"
It was a pleasant voice—a man's. Keeping his eyes on what he was doing, Tabs answered in the negative. Then he recalled that Gervis had been the name of Maisie's second husband. "If it's the Gervis who used to live here," he indicated the house with a jerk of his head, "I'm afraid you won't find him. He's been dead these three years—killed at the Front."