He went to dinner glum and silent, and his mood threw a dinge even over the children.  It was a melancholy, rather ill tempered evening, for they were all tired; several times he caught Stella looking at him with a hurt, puzzled expression, and this pleased his evil mood.  He slept miserably; got up quite early, and wandered out.  He went down to the beach.  Alone there with the serene, the blue, the sunlit sea, his heart relaxed a little.  Conceited fool—­to think that Megan would take it so hard!  In a week or two she would almost have forgotten!  And he well, he would have the reward of virtue!  A good young man!  If Stella knew, she would give him her blessing for resisting that devil she believed in; and he uttered a hard laugh.  But slowly the peace and beauty of sea and sky, the flight of the lonely seagulls, made him feel ashamed.  He bathed, and turned homewards.

In the Crescent gardens Stella herself was sitting on a camp stool, sketching.  He stole up close behind.  How fair and pretty she was, bent diligently, holding up her brush, measuring, wrinkling her brows.

He said gently: 

“Sorry I was such a beast last night, Stella.”

She turned round, startled, flushed very pink, and said in her quick way: 

“It’s all right.  I knew there was something.  Between friends it doesn’t matter, does it?”

Ashurst answered: 

“Between friends—­and we are, aren’t we?”

She looked up at him, nodded vehemently, and her upper teeth gleamed again in that swift, brilliant smile.

Three days later he went back to London, travelling with the Hallidays. 
He had not written to the farm.  What was there he could say?

On the last day of April in the following year he and Stella were married....

Such were Ashurst’s memories, sitting against the wall among the gorse, on his silver-wedding day.  At this very spot, where he had laid out the lunch, Megan must have stood outlined against the sky when he had first caught sight of her.  Of all queer coincidences!  And there moved in him a longing to go down and see again the farm and the orchard, and the meadow of the gipsy bogle.  It would not take long; Stella would be an hour yet, perhaps.

How well he remembered it all—­the little crowning group of pine trees, the steep-up grass hill behind!  He paused at the farm gate.  The low stone house, the yew-tree porch, the flowering currants—­not changed a bit; even the old green chair was out there on the grass under the window, where he had reached up to her that night to take the key.  Then he turned down the lane, and stood leaning on the orchard gate-grey skeleton of a gate, as then.  A black pig even was wandering in there among the trees.  Was it true that twenty-six years had passed, or had he dreamed and awakened to find Megan waiting for him by the big apple tree?  Unconsciously he put up his hand to his grizzled beard