"It will take us about a year," remarked Dane.
Clive nodded, but his eye involuntarily sought the irregular red circle where trouble of all sorts might be conveniently ended by a perfectly respectable Act of God.
Actus Dei nemini facit injuriam.
CHAPTER XIX
THERE was a slight fragrance of tobacco in the room mingling with the fresh, spring-like scent of lilacs—great pale clusters of them decorated mantel and table, and the desk where Athalie sat writing to Captain Dane in the semi-dusk of a May evening.
Here and there dim figures loomed in the big square room; the graceful shape of a young girl at the piano detached itself from the gloom; a man or two dawdled by the window, vaguely silhouetted against the lilac-tinted sky.
Athalie wrote on: "I had not supposed you had landed until Cecil Reeve told me this evening. If you are not too tired to come, please do so. Do you realise that you have been away over a year? Do you realise that I am now twenty-four years old, and that I am growing older every minute? You had better hasten, then, because very soon I shall be too old to believe your magic fairy tales of field and flood and all your wonder lore of travel in those distant golden lands I dream of.