LITMIR.BIZ

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dear," he said, "how am I ever to go away?"

      Her heart leaped against her side, for his tone was tender. But so may a cousin's tone be – even a second cousin's, and when one is thirty-five she has little to fear from the pitying tenderness of her relations.

      "I am so glad you have liked being here," she said sedately. "You must come again some time."

      "I don't want to go away at all," he said. "Dolly, won't you let me stay – won't you marry me?"

      Almost as he took her hand she snatched it from him.

      "You must be mad!" she said. "Why on earth should you want to marry me?" Also she said: "I am old and plain, and you don't love me." But she said it to herself.

      "I do want it," he said, "and I want it more than I want anything."

      His tone was convincing.

      "But why? but why?"

      An impulse of truth-telling came to Robert.

      "Because it's all so beautiful," he said with straightforward enthusiasm. "All your lovely quiet life – and the house, and these old gardens, and the dainty, delicate, firm way you have of managing everything – the whole thing's my ideal. It's perfect – I can't bear any other life."

      "I'm afraid you'll have to," she said with bitter decision. "I am not going to marry a man just because he admires my house and garden, and is good enough to appreciate my methods of household management. Good night."

      She had shaken his hand coolly and shut the front door from within before he could find a word. He found one as the latch clicked.

      "Fool!" he said to himself, and stamped his foot.

      Dorothea ran up the stairs two at a time to say the same word to herself in the stillness of her bedroom.

      "Fool – fool – fool!" she said. "Why couldn't I have said 'No' quietly? Why did I let him see I was angry? Why should I be angry? It's better to be wanted because you're a good manager than not to be wanted at all. At least, I suppose it is. No – it isn't! it isn't! it isn't! And nothing's any use now. It's all gone. If he'd wanted to marry me when I was young and pretty I could have made him love me. And I was pretty – I know I was – I can remember it perfectly well!"

      Her quiet years had taken from her no least little touch of girlish sentiment. The longing to be loved was as keen in her as it had been at twenty. She cried herself to sleep, and had a headache the next day. Also her eyes looked smaller than usual and her nose was pink. She went and sat in the black shade of a yew, and trusted that in that deep shadow her eyes and nose would not make Robert feel glad that she had said "No." She wished him to be sorry. She had put on the prettiest gown she had, in the hope that he would be sorry; then she was ashamed of the impulse; also its pale clear greenness seemed to intensify the pinkness of her nose. So she went back to the trailing grey gown. Her wearing of her best Honiton lace collar seemed pardonable. He would never notice it – or know that real lace is more becoming than anything else. She waited for him in the deep shadow, and it was all the morning that she waited. For he knew the value of suspense, and he had not the generosity that disdains the use of the obvious weapon. He was right so far, that before he came she had had time to wonder whether it was her life's one chance of happiness that she had thrown away. But he drove the knife home too far, for when at last she heard the click of the gate and saw the gleam of flannels through the shrubbery, the anxious questioning, "Will he come?" "Have I offended him beyond recall?" changed at one heart-beat to an almost perfect understanding of his reasons for delay. She greeted him coldly. That he expected. But he saw – or believed he saw – the relief under the coldness – and he brought up his forces for the attack.

      "Dear," he said – almost at once – "forgive me for last night. It was true, and if I had expressed it better you'd have understood. It isn't just the house and garden, and the perfect life. It's you! Don't you understand what it is to come back from the world to all this, and you – you – you – the very centre of the star?"

      "It's all very well," she said, "but that wasn't what you said last night."

      "It's what I meant," said he. "Dear, don't you see how much I want you?"

      "But – I'm old – and plain, and – "

      She looked at him with eyes still heavy from last night's tears, and he experienced an unexpected impulse of genuine tenderness.

      "My dear," he said, "when I first remember your mother she was about your age. I used to think she was the most beautiful person in the world. She seemed to shed happiness and peace around her – like – like a lamp sheds light. And you are just like her. Ah – don't send me away."

      "Thank you," she said, struggling wildly with the cross currents of emotion set up by his words. "Thank you. I have not lived single all these years to be married at last because I happen to be like my mother."

      The words seemed a treason to the dead, and the tears filled Dorothea's eyes.

      He saw them; he perceived that they ran in worn channels, and the impulse of tenderness grew.

      Till this moment he had spoken only the truth. His eyes took in the sunny lawn beyond the yew shadow, the still house: the whir of the lawn-mower was music at once pastoral and patriotic. He heard the break in her voice; he saw the girlish grace of her thin shape, the pathetic charm of her wistful mouth. And he lied with a good heart.

      "My dear," he said, with a tremble in his voice that sounded like passion, "my dear – it's not for that – I love you, Dolly – I think I must have loved you all my life!"

      And at the light that leaped into her eyes he suddenly felt that this lie was nearer truth than he had known.

      "I love you, dear – I love you," he repeated, and the words were oddly pleasant to say. "Won't you love me a little, too?"

      She covered her face with her hands. She could no more have doubted him than she could have doubted the God to whom she had prayed night and morning for all these lonely years.

      "Love you a little?" she said softly. "Ah! Robert, don't you know that I've loved you all my life?"

      So a lie won what truth could not gain. And the odd thing is that the lie has now grown quite true, and he really believes that he has always loved her, just as he certainly loves her now. For some lies come true in the telling. But most of them do not, and it is not wise to try experiments.

      THE GIRL WITH THE GUITAR

      THE last strains of the ill-treated, ill-fated "Intermezzo" had died away, and after them had died away also the rumbling of the wheels of the murderous barrel-organ that had so gaily executed that, along with the nine other tunes of its repertory, to the admiration of the housemaid at the window of the house opposite, and the crowing delight of the two babies next door.

      The young man drew a deep breath of relief, and lighted the wax candles in the solid silver candlesticks on his writing-table, for now the late summer dusk was falling, and that organ, please Heaven, made full the measure of the day's appointed torture. There had been five organs since dinner – and seven in the afternoon – one and all urgently thumping their heavy melodies into his brain, to the confusion of the thoughts that waited there, eager to marshal themselves, orderly and firm, into the phalanx of an article on "The Decadence of Criticism."

      He filled his pipe, drew paper towards him, dipped his pen, and wrote his title on the blank page. The silence came round him, soothing as a beloved presence, the scent of the may bushes in the suburban gardens stole in pleasantly through the open windows. After all, it was a "quiet neighbourhood" as the advertisement had said – at any rate, in the evening: and in the evening a man's best efforts —

      Thrum, tum, tum —Thrum, tum, tum came the defiant strumming of a guitar close to the window. He sprang to his feet – this was, indeed, too much! But before he could draw back the curtains and express himself to the intruder, the humming of the guitar was dominated by the first words of a song —

      "Oh picerella del vieni al'mare

      Nella barchetta veletto di fiore

      La

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