most uninteresting surroundings.  Harmony is proclaimed for a little while, and we wonder why things were black before, and have to remember that they will be black again.  But when such a truce to pain falls in the happiest setting, and the most glorious scenery, then rejoice and be glad, it is a real truce of God.  So did Rose night by night rejoice without trembling.  It wanted much skill on Edmund’s part to ward off any scruples, any moments of consciousness.  He showed great self-command, surprising self-discipline in carrying out his tactics.  There were moments when their talk had slid into great intimacy, when they were close together in heart and in mind, and he slipped back into the commonplace only just in time.  There were moments, especially on the return journey, when he could hardly hide his sense of how gracious and delicious was her presence, how acute her instincts, how quaintly and attractively simple her mind, how big her spiritual outlook.  But before she could have more than a suspicion of his thoughts Edmund would make any consciousness seem absurd by a comment on the doings of the very young people on board.

“The child does look happy,” he said in his laziest voice one evening when he knew his look had been bent for a rashly long moment on Rose.  “Happy and pretty,” he murmured to himself, and he watched his youngest guest with earnestness.  Then he sat down near Rose on a low deck-chair, and put away the glasses he held in his pocket.  “I’m not sure I don’t get as much pleasure out of the hazy world I see about me as you long-sighted people do; the colours are marvellous.”  Rose looked at him in surprise.

“But Edmund, don’t you see more than haze?”

“Oh, yes, I can see a foreground, and then the rest melts away.  I don’t know what is meant by a middle distance—­that’s why I can’t shoot.”

Rose sat up with an eager look on her face.  “I never knew that; I only thought you did not care for shooting.”

There was a silence of several minutes, and neither looked at the other.  At last Edmund rose and went to the side of the boat and looked over at the water, and then, turning half-way towards her, said:  “Why does it startle you so much?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“But you do know perfectly well.”

“Indeed, Edmund.”  Her face was flushed and her voice a little tremulous.

“You shall tell me.”  He spoke more imperiously than he knew.

“I can’t, indeed I can’t.”

“No,” he said; “it would be a difficult thing to say, I admit.”

“Couldn’t we read something?” said Rose.

“No, no use at all.  I am going to tell you why you are so glad I am short-sighted.”

“But I am not glad.”

“I repeat that you are, and this is the reason why.”

“You shall not say it,” said Rose, now more and more distressed and embarrassed.

“It’s because you never knew before why I did not volunteer for the war, that is why you are so glad.”  “Yes,” he thought in anger, “she has had this thing against me all the time; it is one of the defences she has set up.”  But he was hurt all the same—­hurt and angry; he wanted to punish her.  “So all the time you have thought this of me?”