And taking a letter from her pocket, she read and pondered it with smiling eyes.  “Peter will think I’m a witch.  Dear old Peter! ...  Hullo!”

For the sound of her name, shouted by some one still invisible, caught her ear.  She shouted back, and in another minute the boyish form of Peter Dale emerged among the oaks above her.  Three leaps, and he was at her side.

“I say, Helena, this is jolly!  You were a brick to write.  How I got here I’m sure I don’t know.  I seem to have broken every rule, and put everybody out.  My boss will sack me, I expect.  Never mind!—­I’d do it again!”

And dropping to a seat beside her, on a fallen branch that had somehow escaped the deluge of the day, he feasted his eyes upon her.  She had clambered back into her seat, and taken off her water-proof hat.  Her hair was tumbling about her ears, and her bright cheeks were moist with rain, or rather with the intermittent showers that the wind shook every now and then from the still dripping oak trees above her.  Peter thought her lovelier than ever—­a wood-nymph, half divine.  Yet, obscurely, he felt a change in her, from the beginning of their talk.  Why had she sent for him?  The wildest notions had possessed him, ever since her letter reached him.  Yet, now that he saw her, they seemed to float away from him, like thistle-down on the wind.

“Helena!—­why did you send for me?”

“I was very dull, Peter,—­I wanted you to amuse me!”

The boy laughed indignantly.

“That’s all very well, Helena—­but it won’t wash.  You’re jolly well used to getting all you want, I know—­but you wouldn’t have ordered me up from Town—­twelve hours in a beastly train—­packed like sardines—­just to tell me that.”

Helena looked at him thoughtfully.  She began to eat some unripe bilberries which she had gathered from the bank beside her, and they made little blue stains on her white teeth.

“Old boy—­I wanted to give you some advice.”

“Well, give it quick,” said Peter impatiently.

“No—­you must let me take my time.  Have you been to a great many dances lately, Peter?”

“You bet!” The young Adonis shrugged his shoulders.  “I seem to have been through a London season, which I haven’t done, of course, since 1914.  Never went to so many dances in my life!”

“Somebody tells me, Peter, that—­you’re a dreadful flirt!” said Helena, still with those grave, considering eyes.

Peter laughed—­but rather angrily.

“All very well for you to talk, Miss Helena!  Please—­how many men were you making fools of—­including your humble servant—­before you went down to Beechmark?  You have no conscience, Helena!  You are the ’Belle Dame sans merci.’”

“All that is most unjust—­and ridiculous!” said Helena mildly.

Peter went off into a peal of laughter.  Helena persisted.

“What do you call flirting, Peter?”

“Turning a man’s head—­making him believe that you’re gone on him—­when, in fact, you don’t care a rap!”