She looked up to meet his eager face and his eyes like lamps. "No, no!"

she cried. "Don't tell me."

"But do you know without telling?"

"I must think."

"But surely you must have read it long ago."

"I only glanced at it. I never looked it in the face."

"Don't examine it too closely now, or I'm afraid you will find it a poor thing," he said whimsically. "Take it on impulse, Madeline."

But she waved him away with her hand, turning her face to one side, and leaned back in her cushions, while Ellery waited, hardly breathing.

There was a deep hush on the opal waters under the April morning sky, and no sound but the far-off note of a wood-thrush.

"Madeline!" he cried at last. "Be merciful, and speak to me."

She gathered her self-possession and turned to face him with smiles and dimples, and one swift look full in the face.

"Mr. Norris," she said airily, and then laughed as his face fell at the t.i.tle, "we are in the middle of a big sheet of water, and I do not want you to upset the boat; we are visible from many miles of sh.o.r.e, and the world and his wife are driving and motoring on this most beautiful of days; but over on our right there is a lovely little beach, and a clump of willows that have forced the season a bit. Perhaps, if we went there, I might listen to what you have to say."

"Oh, Madeline, my Madeline," he said, "I can never tell you because the words are not made that will hold it, and it will take a lifetime to tell it all. But, if you are willing, we will make a beginning over there by the dipping willows." He shot a stormy glance at her as he caught the oars, and she met it bravely. "Please don't trail your fingers in the water," he said. "You are delaying the progress of the boat."

"Heaven forbid delay!" she cried in mock horror, and showered him with the drops from her lifted hand.

The keel grated, and Ellery sprang ash.o.r.e and held out his arms to help her.

"Madeline," he said, sternly holding her at arm's length, "this spot is so evidently created for a lovers' bower, that I suspect you of having had your eye on it for a long time. How did you come to direct me here?"

"Instinct," she laughed. "That wonderful instinct of woman."

"Shall we stay here for ever and let the world wag?"

"And live on locusts and wild honey?" she asked.

"Yes, if you will be my wild honey. I'm going to begin to devour you right away." And he caught her at last.

"Who gave you permission?" she whispered with cheek close to his.

"Who? Haven't you heard the universe shouting aloud? The sky, and the sun and the lake and the woods. They've been crying 'Mine! Mine! Mine!'

for the last ten minutes. You'll never contradict them, sweetheart?"

"Never," said she.

For a long moment they looked into each other's eyes, and she read in his that mastery without tyranny which for some inexplicable reason sets a woman's heart beating with unimagined bliss.

Ten minutes later, or so it seemed, Madeline pulled his watch from his pocket and started in dismay.

"Ellery," she cried, "do you know that we have been sitting here for four hours? What will Mrs. Lenox and all the others think?"

"Who cares what they think? Let them think the truth, if their imaginations can soar to that height."

"We must hurry back."

"Don't you think it is a little brutal to invite a man to leave Heaven and go back to earth?"

"Perhaps we need a dose of the world. Medicine is good for one."

"Not unless he is ill; and I was never well till now."

"Come, Ellery, we really must go," she said with severity.

"Well, there's lunch," he meditated. "I confess that I can view the prospect of luncheon with something like equanimity. There are certain advantages about the world, Madeline."

It was long after the driving party had returned when Miss Elton and Mr.

Norris strolled up the path from the boat-house, quite indifferent to the fact of their lateness. d.i.c.k on the piazza watched their coming and needed no handwriting on the wall. The girl glowed and Ellery reflected her light.

"It would be a perfect woman who should unite her spirit with Lena's soul-delighting body," Percival said to himself. "And Ellery chooses the spirit, and I, G.o.d help me, love and choose the body. But I can not bear to meet them."

He was turning to slip away when he met his wife face to face, and stopped half in curiosity to see what she would notice and hear what she would say. Lena, too, gazed at the oblivious advancing pair.

"Well, of all things!" exclaimed Mrs. Percival. "I should think she'd feel pretty cheap."

"Why?" asked d.i.c.k, startled.

"Coming down to a n.o.body like that!" Lena retorted in scorn. "But I think she has been going off in her looks lately, and I dare say she knows it, and is glad to get even him."

The billiard room was empty, and d.i.c.k went in and shut the door.

CHAPTER XIX

ORIENTAL RUBIES

As the months drifted into summer, young Mrs. Percival often felt very dull. She had not even the excitement of envy left her for, with the engagement of Miss Elton and Mr. Norris, much of her old enmity for Madeline faded. Ellery looked to her like a fate so inferior to her own that she could afford to drop her jealousy; and since Mr. Early and d.i.c.k were now wholly released from thrall, she considered Madeline a creature too inoffensive to be reckoned an enemy. She could even share the tolerant and amused pleasure with which the world surveys a love match.

This pair was so evidently and rapturously content that they diffused their own atmosphere. Lena could not understand that variety of love, but its presence was patent to her.

Most of the "real people" as Mrs. Appleton called them, in improvement on their Maker's cla.s.sification, were leaving town either for the lake or for some more distant breathing place, but she was tied at home, first because Mrs. Percival the elder, whom d.i.c.k refused to desert, preferred the wide quiet of her rooms, and second because d.i.c.k himself grew daily more absorbed in his political labors.

Lena went to say good-by for the summer to Mrs. Appleton and was bidden to come up stairs to a disordered little room where that matron superintended a flushed maid busy with packing.

"I am really quite played out with all this turmoil," Mrs. Appleton sighed. "Truly, dear Mrs. Percival, I think you are to be congratulated on staying at home. The game is not worth the candle."

"I think, if Madame is tired, I could finish alone." Marie lifted a face that manifested hope from the bottom of a trunk, but Madame shook her head. It was one of her principles to see to everything herself and so gain the proud consciousness of utter exhaustion in doing her duty.