of her cheeks, and just stirred a lock that, escaping from her gorgeous coils of dark-red hair, hung curling over her ear and neck.  Into her eyes of dull blue—­like the blue of old china—­the morning’s sun sent an occasional unwonted sparkle.  Over the asphalt and over the green grass-plots of the square the shadows of the venerable elms wove a shifting maze of tracery.  Traffic avoided the place.  It was invariably quiet in the square, and one—­as now—­could always hear the subdued ripple and murmur of the fountain in the centre.

But the crowning delight of that morning was the sudden appearance of a robin in a tree close to Lloyd’s window.  He was searching his breakfast.  At every moment he came and went between the tree-tops and the grass-plots, very important, very preoccupied, chittering and calling the while, as though he would never tire.  Lloyd whistled to him, and instantly he answered, cocking his head sideways.  She whistled again, and he piped back an impudent response, and for quite five minutes the two held an elaborate altercation between tree-top and window-ledge.  Lloyd caught herself laughing outright and aloud for no assignable reason.  “Ah, the world was a pretty good place after all!”

A little later, and while she was still at the window, Rownie brought her a note from Bennett, sent by special messenger.

“Ferriss woke up sick this morning.  Nobody here but the two of us; can’t leave him alone.  Bennett.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Lloyd Searight a little blankly.

The robin and his effrontery at once ceased to be amusing.  She closed the window abruptly, shutting out the summer morning’s gayety and charm, turning her back upon the sunlight.

Now she was more in the humour of reading.  On the great divan against the wall lay the month’s magazines and two illustrated weeklies.  Lloyd had bought them to read on the train.  But now she settled herself upon the divan and, picking up one of the weeklies, turned its leaves listlessly.  All at once she came upon two pictures admirably reproduced from photographs, and serving as illustrations to the weekly’s main article—­“The Two Leaders of the Freja Expedition.”  One was a picture of Bennett, the other of Ferriss.

The suddenness with which she had come upon his likeness almost took Lloyd’s breath from her.  It was the last thing she had expected.  If he himself had abruptly entered the room in person she could hardly have been more surprised.  Her heart gave a great leap, the dull crimson of her cheeks shot to her forehead.  Then, with a charming movement, at once impulsive and shamefaced, smiling the while, her eyes half-closing, she laid her cheek upon the picture, murmuring to herself words that only herself should hear.  The next day she left for the country.

On that same day when Dr. Pitts arrived at the rooms Ferriss and Bennett had taken he found the anteroom already crowded with visitors—­a knot of interviewers, the manager of a lecture bureau, as well as the agent of a patented cereal (who sought the man of the hour for an endorsement of his article), and two female reporters.