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for falling in love. It’s a different kind of affinity.—Here they are, Norah.—Celia is looking amused—and surprised.’

‘Celia shan’t fall in love with Uncle Godfrey;—I can promise you that,’ said Norah; ‘and he won’t fall in love with her. It’s not her kind of difference that would attract him. He has no taste for paradise,’ and Norah laughed with a certain grimness as she followed Monica out into the hall.

A car, spattered with mud, stood before the door and a gaunt, heavily built man, with close-cropped hair, was holding out a hand for Celia to descend. No, Captain Ingpen had no taste for paradise, Monica in a swift glance at him agreed, feeling something a little brutal in his air of nonchalant kindness. Celia was more a disembodied spirit than a pretty woman and Captain Ingpen’s taste would be for pretty women. Again he recalled India and the men there, who were too stupid, or too busy, to care for anything but pretty women.

Celia might not be pretty in the Indian sense, but she was the loveliest creature, and all her little foibles were dear to Monica; her breathless way of laughing, her gay yet melancholy inconsequence, even her tendency to make rather pointless jokes when she was shy. There was something arctic in