"With Philip!--the jolliest, kindest chap going! What do you mean?"

"All right. It's no good talking to anybody with a _parti pris_!"

"No--but seriously, Helena--what's the matter? Why, you told me you only began the new arrangement two days ago."

"Exactly. And there's been time already for a first-class quarrel. Time also for me to see that I shall never, never get on with him. I don't know how we are to get through the two years!"

"_Well_!" ejaculated her companion. "In Heaven's name, what has he been doing?"

Helena shrugged her shoulders. She was striding beside him like a young Artemis--in white, with a silver star in her hair, and her short skirts beaten back from her slender legs and feet by the evening wind. Geoffrey French, who had had a classical education, almost looked for the quiver and the bow. He was dazzled at once, and provoked. A magnificent creature, certainly--"very mad and very handsome!"--he recalled Buntingford's letter.

"Do tell me, Helena!" he urged.

"What's the good? You'll only side with him--and _preach_. You've done that several times already."

The young man frowned a little.

"I don't preach!" he said shortly. "I say what I think--_when_ you ask me. Twice, if I remember right, you told me of some proceeding of yours, and asked me for my opinion. Well, I gave it, and it didn't happen to be yours. But that isn't preaching."

"You gave so many reasons--it _was_ preaching."

"Great Scott!--wasn't it more polite to give one's reasons?"

"Perhaps. But one shouldn't _burst_ with them. One should be sorry to disagree."

"Hm. Well--now kindly lay down for me, how I am to disagree with you about Philip. For I do disagree with you, profoundly."

"There it is. Profoundly--that shows how you enjoy disagreeing. Why can't you put yourself at my point of view?"

"Well, I'll try. But at least--explain it to me."

Helena threw herself into a garden chair, under a wild cherry which rose a pyramid of silver against an orange sky. Other figures were scattered about the lawns, three or four young men, and three or four girls in light dresses. The air seemed to be full of laughter and young voices.

Only Mrs. Friend sat shyly by herself just within the drawing-room window, a book on her knee. A lamp behind her brought out the lines of her bent head and slight figure.

"I wonder if I like you well enough," said Helena coolly, biting at a stalk of grass--"well enough, I mean, to explain things. I haven't made you my father confessor yet, Geoffrey."

"Suppose you begin--and see how it answers," said French lazily, rolling over on the grass in front of her, his chin in his hands.

"Well, I don't mind--for fun. Only if you preach I shall stop. But, first of all, let's get some common ground. You admit, I suppose, that the war has changed the whole position of women?"

"Yes--with reservations."

"Don't state them!" said Helena hastily. "That would be preaching.

Yes, or No?"

"Yes, then,--you tyrant!"

"And that means--doesn't it--at the very least--that girls of my own age have done with all the old stupid chaperonage business--at least nearly all--that we are to choose our own friends, and make our own arrangements?--doesn't it?" she repeated peremptorily.

"I don't know. My information is--that the mothers are stiffening."

A laughing face looked up at her from the grass.

"Stiffening!" The tone was contemptuous. "Well, that may be so--for babes of seventeen--like that one--" her gesture indicated a slight figure in white at the edge of the lawn--"who have never been out of the school-room--but--"

"You think nineteen makes all the difference? I doubt," said Geoffrey French coolly, as he sat up tailor-fashion, and surveyed her. "Well, my view is that for the babes, as you call them, chaperonage is certainly reviving. I have just been sitting next Lady Maud, this babe's mother, and she told me an invitation came for the babe from some great house last week, addressed to 'Miss Luton and partner'--whereon Lady Maud wrote back--'My daughter has no partner and I shall be very happy to bring her.' Rather a poke in the eye! Then there are the women of five or six and twenty who have been through the war, and are not likely to give up the freedom of it--ever again. That's all right. They'll take their own risks. Many of them will prefer not to live at home again. They'll live with a friend--and visit their people perhaps every day! But, then there's _you_, Helena--the betwixt and between!--"

"Well--what about me?"

"You're neither a babe--nor a veteran."

"I'm nineteen and a half--and I've done a year and a half of war work--"

"Canteen--and driving? All right. Am I to give an opinion?"

"You will give it, whatever I say. And it's you all over--to give it, before you've allowed me to explain anything."

"Oh, I know your point of view--" said Geoffrey, unperturbed--"know it by heart. Haven't you dinned it into me at half a dozen dances lately?

No!--I'm entitled to my say--and here it is. Claim all the freedom you like--but as you're _not_ twenty-five, but nineteen--let a good fellow like Buntingford give you advice--and be thankful!"

"Prig!" said Helena, pelting him with a spray of wild cherry, which he caught and put in his button-hole. "If that isn't preaching, I should like to know what is!"

"Not at all. Unbiased opinion--civilly expressed. If you really were an emancipated young woman, Helena, you'd take it so! But now--" his tone changed--"let's come to business. What have you and Philip been quarrelling about?"

Helena straightened her shoulders, as though to meet certain disapproval.

"Because--I asked Lord Donald to spend the week-end here--"

"You didn't!"

"I did; and Cousin Philip wired to him and forbade him the house.

Offence No. 1. Then as I intended all the same to see Jim, I told him I would go up and lunch with him at the Ritz. Cousin Philip vows I shan't, and he seems to have some underhand means of stopping it--I--I don't know what--"

"Underhand! Philip! I say, Helena, I wonder whether you have any idea how people who really know him think about Buntingford!"

"Oh, of course men back up men!"

"Stuff! It's really silly--abominable too--the way you talk of him--I can't help saying it."

And this time it was Geoffrey's turn to look indignant. His long face with its deeply set grey eyes, a rather large nose, and a fine brow under curly hair, had flushed suddenly.

"If you can't help it, I suppose you must say it. But I don't know why I should stay and listen," said Helena provokingly, making a movement as though to rise. But he laid a hand on her dress:

"No, no, Helena, don't go--look here--do you ever happen to notice Buntingford--when he's sitting quiet--and other people are talking round him?"

"Not particularly." The tone was cold, but she no longer threatened departure.

"Well, I just ask you--some time--to _watch_. An old friend of his said to me the other day--'I often feel that Buntingford is the saddest man I know.'"