Sitting on his prayer-book, Trevillian burrowed into the past. What had he felt, thought, fancied, in those moments while she had gone to get her cloak? Who and what was she? Into what whirlpool drawing him? How nearly he had bolted--back to the idyllic, to Varvara’s searching candour and Katrina’s laughing innocence, before she was there beside him, lace veiling her hair, face, eyes, like an Eastern woman, and her fingers had slipped under his sleeve.... What a walk! What sense of stepping into the unknown; strange intimacy and perfect ignorance! Perhaps every man had some such moment in his life--of pure romance, of adventuring at all and any cost. He had restrained the impulse to press that slender hand closely to his side, had struggled to preserve the perfect delicacy worthy of the touching confidence of so beautiful a lady. Italian, Spanish, Polish, Bohemian? Married, widowed? She told him nothing; he asked no questions. Instinct or shyness kept him dumb, but with a whirling brain. And the night above them had seemed the starriest ever seen, the sweetest scented, the most abandoned by all except himself and her. They had come to the gate of this very garden, and, opening it, she had said: “Here is my home. You have been perfect for me, monsieur.” Her lightly resting fingers were withdrawn. Trevillian remembered, with a sort of wonder, how he had kissed those fingers. “I am always at your service, madame.” Her lips had parted; her eyes had an arch sweetness he had never seen before or since in woman. “Every night I play. _Au revoir!_” He had listened to her footsteps on the path, watched lights go up in the house which looked so empty now behind him, watched them put out again, and, retracing his steps, had learned by heart their walk from the Casino, till he was sure he could not miss his way to that garden gate by day or night.... A fluster of breeze came into the jungle where he sat, and released the dry rustle of the palm-tree leaves. “_On fait des folies!_” as the French put it. Loose lot, the French! Queer what young men would go through when they were ‘making madnesses.’ And, plucking a bit of lilac, old Trevillian put it to his nose, as though seeking explanation for the madnesses of youth. What had he been like then? Thin as a lath, sunburnt--he used to pride himself on being sunburnt--a little black moustache, a dandy about clothes. The memory of his youthful looks warmed him, sitting there, chilly from old age....