Eve made a remark about a flower-bed.  Then her voice subdued again.

“How do you look back on your great venture—­your attempt to make the most that could be made of a year in your life?”

“Quite contentedly.  It was worth doing, and is worth remembering.”

“Remember, if you care to,” Eve resumed, “that all I am and have I owe to you.  I was all but lost—­all but a miserable captive for the rest of my life.  You came and ransomed me.  A less generous man would have spoilt his work at the last moment.  But you were large minded enough to support my weakness till I was safe.”

Hilliard smiled for answer.

“You and Robert are friends again?”

“Perfectly.”

She turned, and they rejoined the company.

A week later Hilliard went down into the country, to a quiet spot where he now and then refreshed his mind after toil in Birmingham.  He slept at a cottage, and on the Sunday morning walked idly about the lanes.

A white frost had suddenly hastened the slow decay of mellow autumn.  Low on the landscape lay a soft mist, dense enough to conceal everything at twenty yards away, but suffused with golden sunlight; overhead shone the clear blue sky.  Roadside trees and hedges, their rich tints softened by the medium through which they were discerned, threw shadows of exquisite faintness.  A perfect quiet possessed the air, but from every branch, as though shaken by some invisible hand, dead foliage dropped to earth in a continuous shower; softly pattering from beech to maple, or with the heavier fall of ash-leaves, while at long intervals sounded the thud of apples tumbling from a crab-tree.  Thick-clustered berries arrayed the hawthorns, the briar was rich in scarlet fruit; everywhere the frost had left the adornment of its subtle artistry.  Each leaf upon the hedge shone silver-outlined; spiders’ webs, woven from stein to stem, glistened in the morning radiance; the grasses by the way side stood stark in gleaming mail.

And Maurice Hilliard, a free man in his own conceit, sang to himself a song of the joy of life.

THE END.