insistent, like a spell laid on her. She gave herself up to it, to
the odd happiness it inspired. She felt it curiously familiar. A
strange feeling came to her--it was as if from childhood she had
been journeying and now come home. An absurd thought, but she
loved it. She had never had a home, but for the next two years she
could pretend. To pretend was easy. All her life she had lived in
a land of dreams, tenanted with shadowy inhabitants of her own
imagining--puppets who moved obedient to her will through all the
devious paths of make-believe; a spirit world where she ranged
free of the narrow walls that restricted her liberty. It had been
easy to pretend in the convent--how much easier here in the solid
embodiment of a dream castle and stimulated by the real human
affection for which her heart had starved. The love she had
hitherto known had been unsatisfying, too impersonal, too
restrained, too interwoven with mystical devotion. Mass Craven's
affection was of a hardier, more practical nature. Blunt candour
and sincerity personified, she did not attempt to disguise her
attachment. She had been attracted, had approved, and had finally
co-opted Gillian into the family. She had, moreover, great faith
in her own judgment. And to justify that faith Gillian would have
gone through fire and water.

She looked gratefully at the solid little figure sitting at
the foot of the table and a gleam of amusement chased the
seriousness from her eyes. Miss Craven was in the throes of a
heated discussion with Peters which involved elaborate diagrams
traced on the smooth cloth with a salt spoon, and as Gillian
watched she completed her design with a fine flourish and leant
back triumphant in her chair, rumpling her hair fantastically.
But the agent, unconvinced, fell upon her mercilessly and in a