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stuff tobacco into the bowl of the pipe.
    “ Nonsense! ” she exclaimed impatiently. “ If Dr. Moffat knew the truth I ’ m quite sure he ’ d think you were eccentric! ”
    “ Instead of which he thinks I ’ m contemplating marrying you and living happily ever after! ”
    There was so much faintly derisive amusement in his grey eyes as he looked up at her that she felt that revealing color, over which she had so little control, sting her cheeks, and for an instant she could not meet his eyes.
    “ If he thinks that it ’ s simply because you—because we had to practice a deception. But I hate deception, and I hate deceiving anyone like Dr. Moffat. He ’ s so kind, and so nice. And I don ’ t like deceiving Mrs. Burns , either, or all the other people in this house. ”
    “ There ’ s only the cook, and Annie. ” he reminded her. “ Oh, and Prout, the parlormaid, and George, who drives my car. I shouldn ’ t think the news has got as far as the village yet, as we ’ ve been cut off for so long. But Annie may carry it there when she goes in to change her library book at the village stores. They ’ re served by a kind of travelling library service there, and— ”
    She gave a kind of exasperated sigh which caused his eyes to twinkle under his long and very thick black eyelashes as he bent over the bowl of his pipe.
    “ I don ’ t really believe you mind ,” she said, staring at him in perplexity.
    “ Quite honestly, I don ’ t, ” he answered, and having got the pipe to work satisfactorily lay back and sent a cloud of the fragrant tobacco smoke moving stealthily in her direction.
    Karen gazed at him with her large eyes—still too large for her small, wan face—trying to solve the enigma of his bland, untroubled countenance. And as she gazed at him she could hardly believe that for nearly a month now they had been almost constant companions, sharing the faded splendors of this quiet room, with its pale green panelled walls and its gilded cornices, its mixture of period furniture and the portraits looking at them from the walls.
    This room had been untouched for many years because, it was lovely enough as it was, and there were no modern improvements that could make it more restful, or give it a greater charm. Karen had grown so accustomed to spending her evenings sitting on one side of the wide hearth while her host lounged on the other that she knew it was going to take a considerable effort to free her mind of the clinging memory of it. The memory of the damask-covered settees, and the long curtains falling before the windows, a rather deeper green than the walls, and of heavy brocade. The memory of the harp standing a little forlornly in one corner , and the piano at which Iain Mackenzie sometimes sat and amused himself—and her—with light syncopation, while the firelight played on the panelled walls, and the dusk deepened around them. The memory of a beautiful set of carved ivory chessmen, and an elegant chess board, which he brought out sometimes and set up on a small table between them; and the way in which, while he painstakingly taught her, who had never played chess before, to beat him at the game, the light from the standard lamp at his elbow discovering burnished gleams in his surprisingly black hair, while outside the snow lay hard and cold under a hard, cold moon.
    When she left Craigie House she would have many memories to take away with her, and so many of them would be pleasant memories. But in the case of Iain Mackenzie these weeks of close confinement to the house and the society of a sickly young woman who had foisted herself upon him must have been weeks of pure, unalloyed boredom. Caught up in a ridiculous situation which, while it might sometimes have amused him a little, must at other times have irked him extremely, she could not understand how he so successfully turned to her an undisturbed front whenever she challenged him on the subject of their extraordinary intimacy.
    For