The impact of the heavy man, flung upon her with utter abandonment, nearly sent the girl, chair and all, over backwards, and startled even her dim brain into some measure of response. I was about to run forward and extricate her from her embarrassing position, when Dr. Taverner caught my arm and stopped me.

“No, watch,” he said. “See what she does. This may be the moment of her fate.”

There was nothing offensive in Howson’s behaviour, for he was so obviously a child and not a man. He always used to remind me of a mastiff that has been nursed as a puppy and cannot realize when it has ceased to be a lap-dog.

For several endless minutes we watched the dim brain trying to work, and then a hand, white and beautifully formed, but limp, as only the hands of the mentally afflicted are limp, was laid on the man’s heaving shoulder. It was the first thought-out action that Mona Cailey had ever performed.

I thought Dr. Taverner would have danced upon the lawn in his delight.

“Look!” he said. “Watch her mind trying to work.” I watched. It was like nothing so much as rusty machinery being reluctantly turned over by hand. The girl’s unlined forehead was contracted with effort as the thought-currents forced their way through the unopened channels. What dim mother instincts awoke I do not know, but she had evidently taken the big child at her feet under her protection.

In a few minutes Howson recovered his self-control and made his embarrassed apologies to the victim of his onslaught. The fine dark eyes gazed steadily back into his without a trace of expression, and realizing the state of affairs, he stopped his apologies in the middle of a sentence and stared back at her.

“Oh, well,” he said, as much to himself as to her; “if you don’t mind, I’m sure I’m thankful,” and sitting at her feet he lit a cigarette with shaking hands.

FROM that time onwards the pair were inseparable during their waking hours. To Howson, the passive presence seemed to afford just the companionship he needed. She gave him a