IN the task of arranging her roses in the various bowls and vases Baines had set in readiness for her, Jean found a certain relief from the feeling of terror which had invaded her. Something in the homely everydayness of the occupation served to relax the tension of her mind, keyed up and overwrought by the stress of her interview with Burke, and it was with almost her usual composure of manner that she greeted Blaise when presently he joined her.

“I’ve raided the rose garden to-day,” she said, smilingly indicating the mass of scented blossom that lay heaped up on the table. “I expect when Johns finds out he will proceed to meditate upon something for my benefit with boiling oil in it.”

Johns was one of the gardeners to whom Jean’s joyous and wholesale robbery of his first-fruits was a daily cross and affliction. Only chloroform would ever have reconciled him to the cutting off of a solitary bloom while still in its prime.

Blaise regarded the tangle of roses consideringly.

“I wonder you found time to gather so many. When I passed by the rose garden, you were—otherwise occupied.” The quietly uttered comment sent the blood rushing up into Jean’s face. When had he passed? What had he seen?

She kept her eyes lowered, seemingly intent upon the disposition of some exquisite La France roses in a black Wedge-wood bowl.

“What do you mean?” she asked negligently.

Tormarin was silent a moment.

Had she looked at him she would have surprised a restless pain in the keen eyes he bent upon her.

“Jean”—he spoke very gently—“have I—to congratulate you?”

It was difficult to preserve her poise of indifference when the man she loved put this question to her, but she contrived it somehow. Women become adepts in the art of hiding their feelings. The conventions demand it of them.

Jean’s answer fluttered out with the airy lightness of a butterfly in the sunshine.

“I am sure I can’t say, unless you tell me upon what grounds?”

“You know of none, then”—swiftly.

“None.”

She nibbled the end of a stalk and surveyed the Wedge-wood bowl critically. Tormarin felt like shaking her.

“Then,” he said gruffly, “let me suggest you revise your methods. The women who plays with Geoffrey Burke might as safely play with an unexploded bomb.”

His voice betrayed him, revealing the personal element behind the proffered counsel.

Jean glanced at him between her lashes. So that was it! He was jealous—jealous of Burke! At last something had happened to pierce the joints of his armour of assumed indifference! Her heart sang a little p忙an of thanksgiving, and all that was woman in her rose bubbling to meet the situation. In an instant she had recaptured her aplomb.

“I think I rather enjoy playing with unexploded bombs,” she returned meditatively. “There are always—possibilities—about them.”

“There are”—grimly. “And it is precisely against those possibilities that I am warning you.”

“Don’t you think it’s rather bad taste on your part to warn me against ............