It was a warm afternoon, but not too dazzling, as a thin veil of clouds was drawn across the sky. Alice alighted from her taxi at the park gates and leisurely walked up the broad path towards the Round Pond. She preferred to meet Douglas here rather than in the Hans Crescent house, because Mrs. Barrast would always have been interrupting. And the girl was sufficiently in love to think that two was company and three a nuisance. As a matter of fact, she acknowledged to herself she was as deeply in love with Montrose as he obviously was with her, though neither of them had put the feeling into words. On this occasion, however, Alice decided that it would be just as well to come to some sort of understanding, since it was probable that she would not remain much longer in town. At least she fancied so, for her father had been grumbling about the money she was spending. Of course she had only known Douglas for seven days, and it was rather early to fall in love with him. But she felt convinced that in previous lives she had loved the young man, and that the present wooing was only the continuation of one interrupted in the distant past. What had interrupted it she could not say, but this time she was determined to bring it to a head, and learn for certain if Douglas felt towards her as she felt towards him. If glances and attentions went for anything, he assuredly did, but modesty or nervousness apparently prevented his plain speaking. Expecting at any minute to be summoned back to the gloom of Tremore, Alice felt that she could not go away without knowing what Montrose's feelings were. And if he really did love her to the extent of making her his wife, she gratefully recognised that she would have some one beside her to resist the pressure put upon her by Don Pablo and her father.