As she moved towards the bay window, she was considering whether she would decide to have her say first, or whether she would let Ronnie begin.  Her wonderful news was so all-important.  Having made up her mind that the time had come when she might at last share it with Ronnie, it seemed almost impossible to wait one moment before telling him.  On the other hand, it would be so absorbing to them both, that probably Ronnie’s subject would be allowed to lapse, completely forgotten and unmentioned.  Nothing which was of even the most transitory interest to Ronnie, ever met this fate at his wife’s hands.  Therefore the very certainty that her news would outweigh his, inclined her to let him speak first.

She was spared the responsibility of decision.

Ronald, turning quickly, faced his wife.  Hesitation seemed futile; promptness, essential. In hoc vince!

“Helen,” he said, “I want to go to Central Africa.”

Helen looked at him in silence, during a moment of immense astonishment.

Then she lifted his hat and gloves, laid them upon a table, seated herself in her easy-chair, and carefully flicked some specks of dust from her riding-habit.

“That is a long way to want to go, darling,” she said, quietly.  “But I can see you think something of imperative importance is calling you there.  Sit down and tell me all about it, right from the beginning.  It is a far cry from our happy, beautiful life here, to Central Africa.  You have jumped me to the goal, without any knowledge of the way.  Now suppose you take me gently along your mental route.”

Ronald flung himself, with a sigh of relief, into the deep basket-work chair opposite Helen’s.  His boyish face cleared visibly; then brightened into enthusiasm.  He stretched out his legs, put his hands behind his head, and looked admiringly across at his wife.

“Helen, you are so perfectly splendid in always understanding, always making it quite easy for a fellow to tell you things.  You have a way of looking past all minor details, straight to the great essentials.  Most women would stand——­”

“Never mind what most women would do, Ronnie.  I never stand, if I can sit down!  It is a waste of useful energy.  But you must tell me ’the great essentials,’ as they appear to you, if I am to view them properly.  Why do you want to go to Central Africa?”

Ronald leapt up and stood with his back to the mantel-piece.

“Helen, I have a new plot; a quite wonderful love-story; better than anything I have done yet.  But the scene is laid in Central Africa, and I must go out there to get the setting vivid and correct.  You remember how thrilled we were the other day, by the account of that missionary chap, who disappeared into the long grass, thirteen feet high, over twenty years ago; lived and worked among the natives, cut off from all civilisation; then, at last, crawled out again and saw a railway train for the first time