‘If you approach the subject in such an irreverent spirit, I don’t think I will have anything to say to you. Remember, I have gone into this question thoroughly, from a scientific point of view.’ ‘I am sure you are wonderfully clever,’ said Daphne; and then, in a coaxing voice, with a lovely look from the sparkling gray eyes, she pleaded: ‘Pray tell my fortune. I shall be wretched if you refuse.’ ‘And I should be wretched if I were to disoblige you. Your left hand, please, and be serious, for it is a very solemn ordeal.’ She gave him her left hand. He turned the soft rosy childish palm to the sunlight, and pored over it as intently as if it had been some manuscript treatise of Albertus Magnus, written in cypher, to be understood only by the hierophant in science. ‘You are of a fitful temper,’ he said, ‘and do not make many friends. Yet you are capable of loving intensely—one or two persons perhaps, not more; indeed, I think only one at a time, for your nature is concentrative rather than diffuse.’ He spoke slowly and deliberately—coldly indifferent as an antique oracle—with his eyes upon her hand all the time. He took no note of the changes in her expressive face, which would have told him that he had hit the truth. ‘You are apt to be dissatisfied with life.’ ‘Oh, indeed I am,’ she cried, with a weary sigh; ‘there are times when I do so hate my life and all things belonging to me—except just one person—that I would change places with any peasant-girl trudging home from market.’ ‘You are romantic, variable. You do not care for beaten paths, and have a hankering for the wild and strange. You love the sea better than the land, the night better than the day.’ ‘You are a wizard,’ cried Daphne, remembering her wild delight in the dancing waves as she stood on the deck of the Channel steamer, her intense love of the winding river at home—the deep, rapid stream—and of fresh salt breezes, and a free ocean life; remembering, too, how her soul had thrilled with rapture in the shadowy courtyard last night, when her shuttlecock flew up towards the moon. ‘You have a wonderful knack of finding out things,’ she said. ‘Go on, please.’ He had dropped her hand suddenly, and was looking up at her with intense earnestness. ‘Please go on,’ she repeated impatiently. ‘I have done. There is no more to be told.’ ‘Nonsense. I know you are keeping back something; I can see it in your face. There is something unpleasant—or something strange—I could see it in the way you looked at me just now. I insist upon knowing everything.’ ‘Insist! I am only a fortune-teller so far as it pleases me. Do you think if a man’s hand told me that he was destined to be hanged, I should make him uneasy by saying so?’ ‘But my case is not so bad as that?’ ‘No; not quite so bad as that,’ he answered lightly, trying to smile. The whole thing seemed more or less a joke; but there are some natures so sensitive that they tremble at the lightest touch; and Daphne felt uncomfortable.