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 smile, the suggestion of pale gilding that marked the contours of her smooth hair, her compact little figure, her simple black satin frock.

The retort pleased him, yet as he turned to the keyboard he shrugged his shoulders with a trace of the humiliation he had always felt as being treated as a superior being, instead of a quite ordinary boy.

At half-past nine he escorted Phœbe from the house, past the historic rose-beds. Wrapped in cloaks and equipped with overshoes and a lantern, they plodded through acres of slush which Phœbe likened to pineapple sherbet. For an unnaturally long period Paul had eschewed feminine society. The cosiness of the girl whose arm he was holding roused susceptibilities that had been lying torpid. Phœbe chatted easily, but never aimlessly. Her remarks were inclined to be edged. Her reserve piqued him. It was as though there were a lump in it which all his personal arts failed to dissolve. He decided, on the spot, to challenge her.

"Tell me, Phœbe"—it was the first time he had used her name—"why do you dislike me?"

She looked up at him, her face a patchwork of curved shadows cast by the lantern. Her lips were closed and there was a half timid glint in her eyes.

"Do I?" she fenced.

"Yes, a little. It's not so much dislike as distrust. Why?"

She considered it. "Why don't you answer the question for yourself, since you seem to know so much about my feelings—more than I do, I assure you."

With a grunt he recalled the far distant occasion when she had been unable to state the colour of his eyes. "Do you mean you don't know that you distrust me?" he insisted.

She went off on a strange tack. "I would have imagined," she said thoughtfully, "that seafaring would