was at this moment very present to him—more bitter, perhaps, than it had ever been. For he regretted now, not that which was past, but its absence from the present; and the curious persistence of Amelie rather vexed him.
' Ah, we all must have a little lumber,' he said, with an unconscious touch of impatience in his voice. ' In this rough and tumble of a world we all get some bits of things broken—ideas, ideals, desires, what you will. They are our lumber; and it is wiser to turn the key on them—not bring them out and try to mend them.'
Amelie noticed the impatience of which he was unconscious.
' Cannot I help you to mend them, Bertie?' she asked, with a wonderful wistfulness in her voice. ' And have I vexed you?'
He threw the grass spearwise down the wind.
' I think you could not really vex me,' he said. ' But you can't help me to mend them; nobody can—not even you.'
She picked up her sketching things in silence, washed out her brushes, and closed her sketch-book.
' Let us forget it all, then,' she said briskly. ' Let us put the hands of the clock back ten minutes, and go on from then. “ The murmur of innumerable bees.” All June is in that line, is it not? Bertie, what a beautiful June we have had!'
' And it is not over yet,' said he.
' No; but people come to us this evening, you know, and on Monday we go up to town. Come, we must go back to the house; it is lunch-time, and the post will be in.'
But for both of them the huge blue of the day was flecked with a little cloud.
After lunch Amelie had a few calls to make, and some little business to transact in the village, and Bertie, who sturdily refused to accompany her, ordered his horse, and
