Philip usually devoted his solitary walk home from Swiss Cottage Station to a minute inspection of the shop-windows in Finchley Road. On this particular Thursday afternoon, though, he began to run. The soundness of his physical condition may be gauged from the fact that he ran up Netherhall Gardens, a declivity much in favour with prospective purchasers of motor-cars, out on trial trips, and in corresponding unfavour with would-be vendors of the same--to say nothing of the inhabitants of the Gardens. He ran on past the newly built Tube Station, up Frognal, and presently reached the outskirts of Hampstead Heath. It was half-past three, and the red wintry sun was sinking low. Suddenly he paused, and then stopped dead. He was conscious, deep down within him, of a recurrence of the sensation which had stirred him on the previous Sunday, as he walked over this part of the Heath with Uncle Joseph. On that occasion he had noticed a little girl sitting on a gate. She had smiled at Philip as he passed--a wide and friendly smile. Philip had not returned it, for Uncle Joseph had noted the smile and improved the occasion at once. "You see, Philip?" he said. "The hunting instinct already! That child has never seen you before; she will never see you again; she would not care if you went to perdition to-morrow, though she would feel intensely gratified if she could be certain that you had gone there on her account. She is nothing to you, or you to her. But you are a man and she is a woman. So she smiles at you. It is the first and most primitive of the arts of attraction. There is nothing behind the smile--nothing but an undeveloped predatory instinct. And that is what Man has to struggle against all the days of his life, to the detriment of his own and the world's progress." Long before Uncle Joseph had concluded these timely observations the little girl was out of sight. "Predatory" was a new word to Philip. He made a mental note of it, and resolved to question Uncle Joseph as to its meaning on a more suitable occasion. Meanwhile he felt that he had had an escape--an escape and a warning. Still--here he was, four days later, back on the same dangerous spot. And there, sitting on the same gate, with the setting sun glinting on her long, honey-coloured pigtail, sat the little girl. "Hallo, boy!" she said, and smiled again. Philip gave her a severe look. CHAPTER III SAMSON AND DELILAH I THE little girl continued to sit upon the top rail of the gate, with her heels on the second and her long black legs tucked up beneath her. She had taken off her jacket, and was using it as a cushion to mitigate the hardness of her perch. She was dressed in a blue cotton frock, which was gathered in round her waist with a shiny red leather belt. At least Philip considered it red: the little girl would have explained that it was _cérise_.