away, and spoke to an acquaintance; but above all the chatter, above the noise of the music, he could hear the words

"May I have the honour of this waltz, Mrs Dudley?" Very clearly, too, came Mona's reply.

"Thank you very much, but I only waltz with my husband. May I introduce you to Miss Rogers?"

A few minutes later Dudley turned to where his wife was sitting near the door, his eyes dim with the expression a man's face wears when he is absolutely at the mercy of a woman. He could not bear the publicity of the ball-room, and he held out his arm to her without a word. Mona took it in silence. He wrapped a fleecy white shawl about her, and they walked out into the cool, quiet starlight.

"You do like this better than that heat and glare and noise?" he asked eagerly.

"That depends on my company. I would rather be there with you than here alone."

"Mona, is it really true,-what you said to that man?" "That I only waltz with my husband? Oh, you silly old boy! Do you really think any other man has put his arm round me since you put yours that night in the dog-cart? Did not you know that you were teaching me what it all meant?"

He put it round her now, roughly, passionately. His next words were laughable, as words spoken in the intensity of feeling so often are.

"Sweetheart," he said, "I am so sorry I cannot dance. I will try to learn when we go back to town.”

Mona laughed softly, and raised his hand to her lips.

"That is as you please," she said. "Personally I think your wife is getting too old for that kind of frivolity. Of course she is glad of any excuse for having your arm round her."

"It is a taste that is likely to be abundantly gratified," he said quietly. "Are you cold? Shall we go back to the hotel?"

"Yes, let us go to our own quiet sitting-room. And, please, be quite sure, Ralph, that I don't care for dancing one bit. I used to, when I was a girl, and I did think I should love to have a waltz with you; but, as you say, this is a thousand times better."

They walked back to the house in silence.

"Oh, Mona, my very own love," he said, throwing a great knot of olive-wood on to the blazing fire, "what muddlers those women are who obey their husbands!"

Mona did not answer immediately. She seated herself on the white rug at his feet, and took his hands in hers. "Obedience comes very easy when one loves," she said at last, "dangerously easy. I never realised it before. But passion dies, they tell us, and the tradition of obedience lives and chafes; and then the flood-gates of all the miseries are opened. Don't ever let me obey you, Ralph!”

"My queen!" he said. "Do you think I would blot out all the exquisite nuances of your tact and intuition with a flat, level wash of brute obedience? God help me! I am not such a blind bungler as that. Don't talk of passion dying, Mona. I don't know what it is I feel for you. I think it is every beautiful feeling of which my soul is capable. It cannot die."

"Ralph," said Mona, "man of the world, do I need to tell you that we must not treat our love in spendthrift fashion, like a mere boy and girl? Love is a weed. It springs up in our gardens of its own accord. We trample on it; but it flourishes all the more. We cut it down, mangle it, root it up; but it seems to be immortal. Nothing can kill it. Then at last we say, 'You are no weed; you are beautiful. Grow there, and my soul shall delight in you.' But from that hour the plant must be left to grow at random no more. If it is, it will slowly and gradually droop and wither. We must tend it, water it, guard with the utmost care its exquisite bloom; and then

"And then?"

"And then it will attain the perfectness and the propor

tions that were only suggested in the weed, and it will live for ever and ever."

"Amen!" said Ralph fervently.

Mona, how is it you

know so much? Who taught you all this about love?" She smiled. "I had some time to think about it after that night at Barntoun Wood. And I think my friends have very often made me their confidante. It is so easy to

see where other people fail!"

CHAPTER LXIII.

VARIUM ET MUTABILE."

"You escaped us last night, Mrs Dudley," said one of her acquaintances next morning.

"Yes. I wanted to watch the dancing; but the salon gets so warm in the evening, I could not stand it. We went for a stroll instead."

"Neither of you gives us too much of your company, certainly. I am anxious to hear your husband's opinion of a leader in this morning's Times."

"Here he comes, then," said Mona, as Ralph appeared with a rug over his arm. "Captain Bruce wants to speak to you, dear. You will know where to find me by-andbye."

She strolled on into the woods, and ensconced herself comfortably on a gnarled old trunk, to wait for her husband. It was not many minutes before he joined her.

grass at

"That's right!" he said, throwing himself on the her feet, with a long sigh of content. "How you spoil one,

dear, for other people's conversation!"

"I have not had a very alarming competitor this morning," she said, smiling.

"No; but if he had been an archangel, it would have made little difference. Go on, lady mine, talk to me-talk to me 'at lairge.' I want to hear your views about everything. Is not it delightful that we know each other so little?" Mona laughed softly and then grew very grave.

"I hope you will say twenty years hence, 'How delightful it is that we know each other so well!""

"I will say it now with all my heart! But it is very interesting to live when every little event of life, every picture one sees, every book one reads, has all the excitement of a lottery, till I hear your opinion of it."

Mona passed her hand through his hair. "Then I hope you will still say twenty years hence, 'How delightful it is that we know each other so little !'"

"I think there is little doubt of that. My conception of you is like a Gothic cathedral: its very beauty lies in the fact that one is always adding to it, but it is never finished. Or, shall I say of you what Kuenen says of Christianity?— 'She is the most mutable of all things; that is her special glory.""

"Varium et mutabile in fact! It is a pretty compliment, but I seem to have heard it before."

"Varium et mutabile semper femina," he repeated, smiling. "A higher compliment was never paid to your sex. Varium et mutabile-like the sea! I never know whom I shall find when I meet you, the high-souled philosopher, the earnest student, the brilliant woman of the world, the tender mothersoul, the frivolous girl, or the lovable child. I don't know which of them charms me most. And when I want something more than any of those, before I have time to call her, there she is, my wife, 'strong and tender and true as steel.'"

Mona did not answer. Her turn would come another time. They knew each other too well to barter compliments like goods and coin across a counter.

"I thought you were going to talk to me," he said presently. "Let us talk about the things that can never be put

into words. Imagine I am Gretchen, sitting at your feet. 'Glaubst du an Gott?'"

Mona smiled down on the upturned face.

"If Gretchen asked me, I hope the Good Spirit would give me words. If my husband asked me

"He does. Glaubst du an Gott?'"

Mona did not answer at once. She looked round at the silent eloquent world of olive-trees, with their grand writhing Laocoon-like stems, and their constant, ever-varying crown of leaves-those trees that seem to have watched the whole history of man, and that sum up in themselves all the mystery of his life, from the love of pleasure in the midst of pain, to the worship of sorrow in a world of beauty

"Ralph," she said, "when you ask me I cannot tell; but I worship Him every moment of my life!"

She smiled. "You have surprised me out of my creed, and you see it is not a creed at all."

"Be thankful for that! It seems to me that the intensest moment in the life of a belief is when it is just on the eve of crystallising into a creed. Don't hurry it."

"No, I am content to wait. When I go to church, I always feel inclined to invert the words of the prayer, and say, 'Granting us in this world life everlasting, and, in the world to come, knowledge of Thy truth.'"

CHAPTER LXIV.

PARTNERS.

December still, but what a change! Without-bitter cold and driving rain; within-bright fires and welcoming faces and a home.

They had returned from the Continent a few hours before,