know, as well as I know anything, that this is the last of them.
Eight o'clock to-night, as punctually as possible."

She watched his retreating figure with eyes that grew slowly misty;
he had been such a jolly comely boy-friend, and they had had such
good times together. The mist deepened on her lashes as she looked
round at the familiar rendezvous where they had so often kept tryst
since the day when they had first come there together, he a
schoolboy and she but lately out of her teens. For the moment she
felt herself in the thrall of a very real sorrow.

Then, with the admirable energy of one who is only in town for a
fleeting fortnight, she raced away to have tea with a world-faring
naval admirer at his club. Pluralism is a merciful narcotic.



CHAPTER VI



Elaine de Frey sat at ease--at bodily ease--at any rate--in a low
wicker chair placed under the shade of a group of cedars in the
heart of a stately spacious garden that had almost made up its mind
to be a park. The shallow stone basin of an old fountain, on whose
wide ledge a leaden-moulded otter for ever preyed on a leaden
salmon, filled a conspicuous place in the immediate foreground.
Around its rim ran an inscription in Latin, warning mortal man that
time flows as swiftly as water and exhorting him to make the most
of his hours; after which piece of Jacobean moralising it set