CHAPTER XIII
I
“Well Miss Freedom, where are you now?”
“I don’t know.”
The question had been asked with a quizzical raising of the black eyebrows and had been answered with a comically pathetic frowning of the amber ones.
It was the following afternoon, and they lounged together on a rug that Dane had spread on a flat rock above the river at one end of the garden. They had been dozing with their arms about each other. She had waked up finally at the pressure of kisses on her mouth and the question. She had drawn herself up resting her chin on her knees, and was looking down on the river.
“No thoughts at all on freedom?” teased Dane.
“No thoughts about anything,” she answered, gazing into space across the river.
He lit his pipe and puffed contentedly, turning often to look at her, vividly conscious now of her every movement. Fantails flew inquisitively about them, and a pair of wood pigeons courted each other with a shameless lack of vocal reticence upon the branches of a totara tree. The hum of bees in the garden behind them was a drowsy and insistent monotone. He felt wonderfully relaxed and happy.
Valerie was full of the glory of this lifting of herself off the earth. She had never supposed that the man existed who could bring love to her clothed with the beauty and delicacy of some romantic dream. But wonder of wonders this man beside her had brought it to her that way.
Dane envied her her complete submersion. He was hap-
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