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he had no one else. For a long time, I suppose, he put me in the position of a sister-in-law."
    "That was going too far!"cried Maurice.

    "Had you neither of you the sightest idea of loyalty to Veronica?"
    Penelope ignored him. She leant suddenly forward, crimson-cheeked, and kissed Veronica.
    "Oh, my dear,"she said,"did you think that because you couldn't care about Victor nobody else could? Do you expect him to go on giving you everything when you've got nothing to give him?"
    They looked at her, dazzled by a flash of comprehension. When she rose from between them she left a gap, a gap she knew to be unbridgeable for both. They were face to face with the hideous simplicity of life. She had upset their bowl and left the two poor gold-fish gasping in an inclement air.
    "Now at last you two have got each other,"she cried, smiling at them from the threshold."Nothing more to bother or disturb you. Just be as happy and as thankful as you can!"
    They sat in silence till the last ironical echo died away. Then"Don't go I"they cried in unison.
    But she was gone.

REQUIESCAT
    MAJENDIE had bought the villa on his honeymoon, and in April, three months after his death, his widow went out there alone to spend the spring and early summer. Stuart, who had been in India at the time of Howard Majendies death, wrote to Mrs. Majendie before starting for home and her reply awaited him at his club; he re-read it several times, looking curiously at her writing which he had never seen before. The name of the villa was familiar to him, Majendie had been speaking of it the last time they dined together; he said it had a garden full of lemon trees and big cypresses, and more fountains than you could imagine—it was these that Ellaline had loved. Stuart pictured Mrs. Majendie walking about among the lemon-trees in her widow's black.
    In her letter she expressed a wish to see him—in a little while."I shall be returning to England at the end of June; there is a good deal of business to go through, and

    there are several things that Howard wished me to discuss with you. He said you would be wilhng to advise and help me. I do not feel that I can face England before then; I have seen nobody yet, and it is difficult to make a beginning. You understand that I feel differently about meeting you; Howard wished it, and I think that is enough for both of us. If you were to be in Italy I should ask you to come and see me here, but as I know that you will be going straight to Ireland I will keep the papers until June, all except the very important ones, which I must sign without quite understanding, I suppose."In concluding, she touched on his friendship with Howard as for her alone it was permissible to touch. Stuart wired his apologies to Ireland and planned a visit to the Italian lakes.
    Three wrecks afterwards found him in the prow of a motor-boat, furrowing Lake Como as he sped towards the villa. The sky was cloudless, the hills to the right rose sheer above him, casting the lengthening shadows of the afternoon across the luminous and oily water; to the left were brilliant and rugged

    above the clustered villages. The boat shot closely under Cadenabbia and set the orange-hooded craft bobbing; the reflected houses rocked and quivered in her wake, colours flecked the broken water.
    "Subito, subito!"said the boatman reassuringly and Stuart started; he did not know that his impatience was so evident. The man shut off his engines, let the boat slide further into the shore, and displacing Stuart from the prow, crouched forward with a ready boat-hook. They were approaching the water-stairway of the villa.
    For a few moments after he had landed, while the motor-boat went chuffing out again into the sunshine, Stuart stood at the top of the stairway looking irresolutely through the iron gates. He was wondering why he had come to Italy, and whether he even cared at all for Mrs. Majendie. He felt incapable of making his way towards her under the clustered branches of