"One grows old so quickly in these terrible days! I am already twenty-one. But you," she went on--"see how inquisitive I am!--I saw you yesterday from the distance, seated here. There are nursemaids and queer fragments of humanity who seem to pass through these gardens and loiter, and sometimes there are those with affairs who go on their way. But you--what do you think of as you sit there? You are a writer, perhaps?" He laughed a little harshly. His voice was not altogether pleasant. "I am a lawyer," he declared, "without a practice. Sometimes the ghosts who call at my empty office stifle me and I come out here to escape from them." "A lawyer? An _avocat_?" she repeated softly to herself. Evidently she found something to interest her in the statement. She glanced towards the sleeping man. Then she came a little nearer. He was conscious of a very delightful and altogether un-English perfume, aware suddenly that her eyes were the colour of violets, framed underneath with deep but not unbecoming lines, that her mouth was curved in a fashion strange to him. "Englishmen, they say, are so much to be trusted," she murmured, "and a lawyer, too..." "I am an American by birth," he interposed, "although I have lived over here nearly all my life." "It is the same thing. We need advice so badly. Let me ask you one question. Is it not the first principle of a lawyer to hold sacred whatever confidence his client may confide in him?" "Absolutely," he assured her. "Even if that confidence," she persisted, "should bring the person who offered it within the hold of the law?" "A lawyer may refuse a client," he said, "but he may never betray his confidence." "Will you tell me your name and address?" she asked eagerly. "My name is Aaron Rodd," he told her. "My address is number seventeen, Manchester Street, Adelphi, and my office is on the third floor." "Mr. Aaron Rodd," she repeated, with a queer little foreign intonation. "That is a strange name and I shall remember it. When might one visit you, monsieur? At three o'clock this afternoon?" "I shall be in all day." "Then au revoir!" she exclaimed, with an abrupt gesture of farewell. The old gentleman had opened his eyes and was gazing fretfully about. She crossed the asphalt walk swiftly towards him. An attendant, who seemed to have gone to sleep standing on one leg; gripped the handle of the bath-chair. The girl passed her arm around the old man's shoulders and whispered something to the attendant. They passed away together. The little streak of sunshine had gone. Aaron Rodd thrust his ungloved hands into his coat pockets and made his way in the opposite direction....