278 Ashes of Incense

nated; each by the new possibilities unfolding in the other—and perhaps ?—in themselves.

“You’ve been gone an awful time,” Michael said, placing her chair in the shadiest spot of the arbour, taking her hat, finding her a footstool: all at once, with the feverish consideration of man for beauty new-discovered. “I wanted to tell you about the cable—I had one from Sis, and she says everything’s going all right, only they want us to come just the same.”

“Us?” Dorofée leaned back, closed her eyes, in the cool shade of the wistaria. “Surely they didn’t say they Wanted me?”

“Yes, they did,” repeated Michael stubbornly; he had taken a seat as near her as he could get. “That was the way the cable read: ‘we want you both to come, as soon as possible.’ Well, that’s to-morrow. I mean the boat goes from here to- morrow.”

“H—m.” Dorofée sat there for some time in silence. So mother-in-law wanted her! It was rather neat, that; on the part of the grinning elf Outside. It put an edge on the going to America. “Then I suppose we must pack, Michael.”

“Yes—yes, I told Akmed to see about the trunks, but the lazy nigger—he just stands there in the sun all the time ”