necessary?"

"Yes, it really is necessary," she answered frankly. "Father's got much
poorer, and everything's about a hundred times as dear as it was before
the War. But you mustn't think that I mind. I like it in a way--and it
won't last for ever. Some of father's investments are beginning to
recover a little even now, and prices are coming down--"

They had now come back to the garden end of the Long Walk. "I must go
now," she said. "Would you like me to send out one of the girls to
entertain you?"

He shook his head. "No, I think I'll stroll about the village for a bit."

They both felt as if the first milestone of their new relationship had
been set deep in the earth, and both were glad and relieved that it was
so.

Radmore walked about a bit, admiring Janet's autumnal herbaceous borders,
and then he remembered a door that he had known of old which led from the
big kitchen garden into the road. If it was open he could step out
without walking across the front of the house.

He turned into the walled garden, and walked quickly down a well-kept
path past the sun-dial to the door. It was open. He walked through it,
and then, with a rather guilty feeling--a feeling he did not care to
analyse--he made his way round the lower half of the village till he
reached the outside wall of The Trellis House.

There he hesitated for a few moments, but even while he was hesitating he