in twenty-three years; got on board, and came home, full of wonderful tales of his experiences?  Well—­you know how, after he had been out there a few years, he found he desperately needed a wife; remembered a plucky girl he had known when he was a boy in England, and managed to get a letter home, asking her to come out to him?  She came, and safely reached the place appointed, at the fringe of the wild growth.  There she waited several months.  But at last the man who had called to her in his need, crawled out of the long grass, took her to himself, and they crawled in again—­man and wife—­and were seen no more, until they reappeared many years later.  Well—­that true story has given me the idea of a plot, which will, I verily believe, take the world by storm!  So original and thrilling!  Far beyond any missionary love-stories.”

Helen’s calm eyes looked into the excited shining of his.

“Dear, why shouldn’t a missionary’s love-story be as exciting as any other?  I don’t quite see how you can better the strangely enthralling tale to which we listened.”

“Ah, don’t you?” cried Ronald West.  “That’s because you are not a writer of romances!  My dear girl, two men crawled out of the long grass thirteen feet high, at the place where the woman was waiting!  Two men—­do you see?  And the man who crawled out first was not the man who had sent for her! He turned up just too late.  Now, do you see?”

“I see,” said Helen.  “Thirteen is always apt to be an unlucky number.”

“Oh, don’t joke!” cried Ronald.  “I haven’t time to tell you, now, how it all works out.  But it’s quite the strongest thing I’ve thought of yet.  And do you see what it means to me?  Think of the weird, mysterious atmosphere of Central Africa, as a setting for a really strong love-interest.  Imagine three quite modern, present-day people, learning to know their own hearts and each other’s, fighting out the crisis of their lives according to the accepted rules and standards of twentieth century civilisation—­yet all amongst the wild primitive savagery of uncivilised tribes, and the extraordinary primeval growths of the unexplored jungles, where plants ape animals, and animals ape men, and all nature rears its head with a loose rein, as if defying method, law, order and construction!  Why, merely to walk through some of the tropical houses at Kew gives one a sort of lawless feeling!  If I stay long among the queer gnarled plants—­all spiky and speckled and hairy; squatting, plump and ungainly on the ground, or spreading huge knotted arms far overhead, as if reaching out for things they never visibly attain—­I always emerge into the ordinary English atmosphere outside, feeling altogether unconventional.  As I walk across the well-kept lawns, I find it almost difficult to behave with decorum.  It takes me quite a long time to become really common-place and conventional once more.”

Helen smiled.  “Darling,” she said, “I think you must have visited the tropical plants in Kew Gardens more frequently than I realised!  I shall have to forbid Kew, when certain important County functions are pending.”