Her lip trembled.

"I was--very unhappy."

"And now?" he asked, caressing the hand he held.

"Well, now--I've walked myself back into--into common sense. There!--I had it out with myself. I may as well have it out with you! Two months ago I was a bit in love with Cousin Philip. Now, of course, I love him--I always shall love him--but I'm not _in_ love with him!"

"Thank the Lord!" cried French--"since it has been the object of my life for much more than two months to persuade you to be in love with me!"

"I don't think I am--yet," said Helena slowly.

Her look was strange--half repellent. On both sides indeed there was a note of something else than prosperous love-making. On his, the haunting doubt lest she had so far given her heart to Philip that full fruition for himself, that full fruition which youth at its zenith instinctively claims from love and fortune, could never be his. On hers, the consciousness, scarcely recognized till now, of a moment of mental exhaustion caused by mental conflict. She was half indignant that he should press her, yet aware that she would miss the pressure if it ceased; while he, believing that his cause was really won, and urged on by Peter's hints, resented the barriers she would still put up between them.

There was a short silence after her last speech. Then Helena said softly--half laughing:

"You haven't talked philosophy to me, Geoffrey, for such a long time!"

"What's the use?" said Geoffrey, who was lying on his face, his eyes covered by his hands--"I'm not feeling philosophical."

"All the same, you made me once read half a volume of Bergson. I didn't understand much of it, except that--whatever else he is, he's a great poet. And I do know something about poetry! But I remember one sentence very well--Life--isn't it Life?--is 'an action which is making itself, across an action of the same kind which is unmaking itself.' And he compares it to a rocket in a fire-works display rushing up in flame through the falling cinders of the dead rockets."

She paused.

"Go on--"

"Give the cinders a little time to fall, Geoffrey!" she said in a faltering voice.

He looked up ardently.

"Why? It's only the living fire that matters! Darling--let's come to close quarters. You gave a bit of your warm heart to Philip, and you imagined that it meant much more than it really did. And poor Philip all the time was determined--cribbed and cabined--by his past,--and now by his boy. We both know that if he marries anybody it will be Cynthia Welwyn; and that he would be happier and less lonely if he married her.

But so long as your life is unsettled he will marry nobody. He remembers that your mother entrusted you to him in the firm belief that, in his uncertainty about his wife, he neither could nor would marry anybody. So that for these two years, at any rate, he holds himself absolutely bound to his compact with her and you."

"And the moral of that is--" said Helena, flushing.

"Marry me!--Nothing simpler. Then the compact falls--and at one stroke you bring two men into port."

The conflict of expressions passing through her features showed her shaken. He waited.

"Very well, Geoffrey--" she said at last, with a long, quivering breath, as though some hostile force rent her and came out.

"If you want me so much--take me!"

But as she spoke she became aware of the lover in him ready to spring.

She drew back instantly from his cry of joy, and his outstretched arms.

"Ah, but give me time--dear Geoffrey, give me time! You have my word."

He controlled himself, warned by her agitation, and her pallor.

"Mayn't we tell Philip--when he comes?"

"Yes, we'll tell Philip--and Lucy--to-night. Not a word!--till then." She jumped up--"Are you going to climb that crag before tea? I am!"

She led him breathlessly up its steep side and down again. When they regained the inn, Geoffrey had not even such a butterfly kiss to remember as she had once given him in the lime-walk at Beechmark; and Lucy, trying in her eager affection to solve the puzzle they presented her with, had simply to give it up.

The day grew wilder. Great flights of clouds came up from the west and fought the sun, and as the afternoon declined, light gusts of rain, succeeded by bursts of sunshine, began to sweep across the oak-woods. The landlord of the inn and his sons, who had been mainly responsible for building the great bonfire on Moel Dun, and the farmers in their gigs who stopped at the inn door, began to shake their heads over the prospects of the night. Helena, Lucy Friend, and Geoffrey spent the afternoon chiefly in fishing and wandering by the river. Helena clung to Lucy's side, defying her indeed to leave her, and Geoffrey could only submit, and count the tardy hours. They made tea in a green meadow beside the stream, and immediately afterwards Geoffrey, looking at his watch, announced to Mrs. Friend that he proposed to bicycle down to Bettws to meet Lord Buntingford.

Helena came with him to the inn to get his bicycle. They said little to each other, till, just as he was departing, French bent over to her, as she stood beside his machine.

"Do I understand?--I may tell him?"

"Yes." And then for the first time she smiled upon him; a smile that was heavenly soft and kind; so that he went off in mounting spirits.

Helena retraced her steps to the river-side, where they had left Lucy.

She sat down on a rock by Lucy's side, and instinctively Lucy put down some knitting she held, and turned an eager face--her soul in her eyes.

"Lucy--I am engaged to Geoffrey French."

Lucy laughed and cried; held the bright head in her arms and kissed the cheek that lay upon her shoulder. Helena's eyes too were wet; and in both there was the memory of that night at Beechmark which had made them sisters rather than friends.

"And of course," said Helena--"you'll stay with me for ever."

But Lucy was far too happy to think of her own future. She had made friends--real friends--in these three months, after years of loneliness.

It seemed to her that was all that mattered. And half guiltily her memory cherished those astonishing words--"_Mr. Alcott_ and I miss you very much."

A drizzling rain had begun when towards eight o'clock they heard the sound of a motor coming up the Bettws road. Lucy retreated into the inn, while Helena stood at the gate waiting.

Buntingford waved to her as they approached, then jumped out and followed her into the twilight of the inn parlour.

"My dear Helena!" He put his arm round her shoulder and kissed her heartily. "God bless you!--good luck to you! Geoffrey has given me the best news I have heard for many a long day."

"You are pleased?" she said, softly, looking at him.

He sat down by her, holding her hands, and revealing to her his own long-cherished dream of what had now come to pass. "The very day you came to Beechmark, I wrote to Geoffrey, inviting him. And I saw you by chance the day after the dance, together, in the lime-walk." Helena's start almost drew her hands away. He laughed. "I wasn't eavesdropping, dear, and I heard nothing. But my dream seemed to be coming true, and I went away in tip-top spirits--just an hour, I think, before Geoffrey found that drawing."

He released her, with an unconscious sigh, and she was able to see how much older he seemed to have grown; the touches of grey in his thick black hair, and the added wrinkles round his eyes,--those blue eyes that gave him his romantic look, and were his chief beauty. But he resumed at once:

"Well, now then, the sooner you come back to Beechmark the better. Think of the lawyers--the trousseau--the wedding. My dear, you've no time to waste!--nor have I. Geoffrey is an impatient fellow--he always was."

"And I shall see Arthur?" she asked him gently.

His look thanked her. But he did not pursue the subject.

Then Geoffrey and Lucy Friend came in, and there was much talk of plans, and a merry dinner _a quatre_. Afterwards, the rain seemed to have cleared off a little, and through the yellow twilight a thin stream of people, driving or on foot, began to pour past the inn, towards the hills. Helena ran upstairs to put on an oilskin hat and cape over her white dress.

"You're coming to help light the bonfire?" said Geoffrey, addressing Philip.