"Then, later on, in the wood"--his voice sinking, as that of one who approaches a Holy of Holies--"when that blessed mist wrapped her round, wrapped her lovely body round, so that I was able to withdraw her from you, so that you did not perceive that she was gone--were not you really aware of it? Did not it seem to you as if the light had gone out of the day? When we stood under those dripping trees, as much alone as if--" "I do not think that there is any need to go into those details," interrupts Burgoyne, in a hard voice; "I imagine that in these cases history repeats itself with very trifling variations; what I should be glad if you would tell me is, whether I am to understand that you have to-day asked Miss Le Marchant to marry you?" Byng brings his eyes, which have been lifted in a sort of trance to the ceiling, down to the prosaic level of his Mentor's severe and tight-lipped face. "When you put it in that way," he says, in an awed half-whisper, "it does seem an inconceivable audacity on my part that I, who but a few days ago was crawling at her feet, should dare to-day to reach up to the heaven of her love." Burgoyne had known perfectly well that it was coming; but yet how much worse is it than he had expected! "Then you _did_ ask her to marry you?" But Byng has apparently fled back on the wings of fantasy into the wet woods of Vallombrosa, for he makes no verbal answer. "She said yes?" asks Burgoyne, raising his voice, as if he were addressing someone deaf. "Am I to understand that she said yes?" At the sound of that hard naked query the dreamer comes out of his enchanted forest again. "I do not know what she said; I do not think she said anything," he answers, murmuring the words laggingly; while, as he goes on, the fire of his madness spires high in his flashing eyes. "We have got beyond speech, she and I! We have reached that region where hearts and intelligences meet without the need of those vulgar go-betweens--words." There is a moment's pause, broken only by the commonplace sound of an electric bell rung by some inmate of the hotel. "And has Mrs. Le Marchant reached that region too?" inquires Jim presently, with an irony he cannot restrain. "Does she, too, understand without words, or have you been obliged, in her case, to employ those vulgar go-betweens?" "She _must_ understand--she _does_--undoubtedly she does!" cries Byng, whose drunkenness shares with the more ordinary kind the peculiarity of believing whatever he wishes to be not only probable but inevitable. "Who could see us together and be in uncertainty for a moment? And her mother has some of her fine instincts, her delicate intuitions; not, of course, to the miraculous extent that _she_ possesses them. In _her_ they amount to genius!" "No doubt, no doubt; but did you trust entirely to Mrs. Le Marchant's instincts, or did you broach the subject to her at all? You must have had time, plenty of time, during that long drive home."