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 They both laughed together and Lanice felt kindly towards him.

'I believe,' he said rather seriously, 'that the truth of the matter lies somewhere between Captain Jones and his boasted sensuality and the heroes of "Hearth and Home" romances, who so mawkishly extol the spirit to the entire neglect of the body.'

There was a pause and Lanice, although by no means bored, feared that perhaps her companion was, and quickly suggested that they return to the house called Paradise.

'No, no—I beg of you. We will never be in so strange a place again—never so far removed from all the world. And I may never again have a live pixie for a companion.'

He settled himself rather obstinately on his stone. The conversation drifted to the tin mines of Cornwall and the Phoenicians and how they taught the Cornishmen the exquisite arts of clotted cream and saffron cake. He was impersonal enough to be slightly provoking to the young lady, who before she had left London had carelessly checked off this week-end as the one in which he should propose—and be declined. She gave him a tentative goblin look, and he, a mere man after all, edged nearer. The conversation swung back over the centuries and across the Atlantic. Quite without prodding from Lanice they began discussing her own fitness for matrimony. She eagerly denied any such fitness, but was piqued when he all too readily assented. Perhaps the Home was not her métier. This unexpected stand on his part