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“Dearest,” said the girl, “I can’t help it! I must live my own life, as people say in plays. After all, I’m twenty-six. I’ve always talked to people if I liked them—even strangers in railway carriages. And people aren’t wild beasts, you know: everything is always all right. And this man can talk; he knows about things. And he’s a gentleman. That ought to satisfy you—that and his references. Don’t worry, there’s a darling. Just be nice to him yourself. He’s simply a godsend in a place like this.”

“He’ll fall in love with you, Celia,” said the mother warningly.

“Not he!” said the daughter. But the mother was right.

Living alone in the queer little cottage, the world, his accustomed life, the Brydges woman, all seemed very far away. Miss Sheepmarsh was very near. Her frank enjoyment of his talk, her gay acceptance of their now almost constant companionship, were things new in his experience of women, and might have warned him that she at least was heart-whole. They would have done had he ever faced the fact that his own heart had caught fire. He bicycled with her along the pleasant Kentish lanes; he