and handed him the photograph.

He stared at it with unfeigned astonishment.

"Oh, yes," he murmured. "Well--?"

"Turn it over," she urged, somewhat breathlessly.

He obeyed, and bit his lip angrily.

"What of it?" he demanded. "A quotation from Kipling's Recessional--a
mere commonplace.... Yes; I wrote it."

Then his anger suddenly left him. His mind had leaped to the solution
of the matter, and the solution appeared to Wesley Elliot as
eminently satisfying; it was even amusing. What a transparent,
womanly little creature she was, to be sure! He had not been
altogether certain of himself as he walked out to the old Bolton
place that morning. But oddly enough, this girlish jealousy of hers,
this pretty spite--he found it piquantly charming.

"I wrote it," he repeated, his indulgent understanding of her mood
lurking in smiling lips and eyes, "on the occasion of a particularly
grubby Sunday School picnic: I assure you I shall not soon forget the
spiders which came to an untimely end in my lemonade, nor the
inquisitive ants which explored my sandwiches."

She surveyed him unsmilingly.

"But you did not mean that," she said. "You were thinking of