“I’ll risk that danger!” he retorted lightly. “Besides, if you’ve got no conscience, I’m worse off still. I’ve got a diseased conscience!”

She didn’t even smile at this sally. With a quick wrinkling of her brow, as if under a twinge of physical discomfort, she scrambled to her feet.

“I must get my bicycle,” she said, with a little shiver. “Father will be waiting for his supper.”

Wolf rose too; and they stood rather awkwardly side by side, while the blackbird flew off with an angry scream.

“Where is your bicycle?” he asked lamely; and as he saw her and felt her, standing there by his side, so pitfully devoid of all physical magnetism, he could not resist a chilly recognition that something of the mysterious appeal that had drawn him to her had slipped away and got lost.