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 radiance was an emanation. And then, at a sound in the kitchen, she snatched my exaltation from me by suddenly turning dull.

"I think that's Mr. Grey come in from his gardening. You'll excuse me."

Through the open door I heard a voice saying in a way which suggested that its production involved much agitation of a prominent Adam's apple:

"Well, dear, seeing you had a friend, I thought I'd better slip up and change my gardening trousers." I do not know what she said to him, but her voice was soft and comforting and occasionally girlish and interrupted by laughter, and I perceived from its sound that with characteristic gravity she had accepted it as her mission to keep loveliness and excitement alive in his life.

"An old friend of mine has been wounded," was the only phrase I heard; but when she drew him out into the gar-