"There is a better Biblical precedent," I said and stopped, furious at myself. He was an ordinary highwayman masquerading as a gentleman, and for all I knew he might at that very minute have had the stolen Romney sewed around him like a cuirass. (He _did_ hold himself very erect, now I thought of it.) And I had allowed his debonair manner to carry me away. But he did not give me a chance to snub him, for the next moment he was speaking gravely in an undertone and looking directly in my eyes. I will say he had a most misleadingly frank expression. "I will give them to you when you are safely back at Ivry," he said, "and not one moment before. I am sure Sir George would agree with me that they are too valuable for a young girl to wear under the circumstances. I will give you my word, if it is worth anything to you." "And if I will not take it?" "It would make no difference," he replied imperturbably, and leaned over to replenish the fire. Sir George slept on noisily; the drip in the corner had become a splash; my white satin slippers before the fire were drying into limp shapelessness. The man in tweeds on the floor raised himself into a sitting position and listened, his hands clasped about his knees. (Knickers with a man are like _décolletage_ with a woman, only to be worn by the elect. Mother wishes me to cut this out, because she says this story is to be read by young persons. But the modern young person is really awfully sophisticated. Sometimes I feel as though mother is a mere child, compared to me.) After a time the man in knickers who was one of the elect dropped on his elbow and began to talk again, looking into the fire. "Rum affair altogether, isn't it?" he said chattily. "Nature having a spasm outside, half a dozen lady votaries of the vote having spasms up at the house, the--er--Premier of Great Britain, on whose possessions the sun never sets, having apoplexy on a packing-case. And out of all this chaos a moment like this: you and I alone here, where I could reach out my hand and touch you--if I dared----" he supplemented as I straightened. "You see, you have gone to my head. You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen." One could tell that, however low he had fallen, he had been properly raised--although I think firelight is always becoming, especially with a white gown. Here Sir George began to rouse. He coughed huskily, sat up and looked around him in a daze, and then stretched out his legs and groaned. "Gad!" he said with a deep breath, "I hoped I had dreamed it." He looked at us both as if to establish our reality, and, reaching over, began to struggle into his shrunken boots. "If the storm has subsided," he said, stamping his foot in an endeavour to get his heel down where it belonged, "I think I shall be going on. This place is damp." "Not half so damp as the road," objected the other man. "It's a matter of miles, you know; and besides, I imagine we are going to have another storm. Listen!"