"You?" he said; and it seemed as though that single word were the only one that he could bring himself to utter. "You?" he repeated, as he moved slowly across the room, his eyes riveted upon Lady Cicely's face. She stood very still, just where she had been when he first entered, the sunlight falling upon the pure gold of her hair, and on the exceeding fairness of her face; her eyes very blue, and very deep, looking up at Fergusson with a strange mixture of embarrassment and sweetness, which set his heart beating fast. In all the time of his acquaintance with her, she had never looked younger or fairer than on this May morning. Her gown of some pale grey material, exactly suited the pale pure tints of her hair and complexion, and the great pink rose fastened against the soft feathers of her grey boa, harmonised with the delicate colour that had risen to her cheeks, as Fergusson entered. "I--promised I would come some day to see your house, and your surgery," she said, hesitating a little between the words, but speaking firmly nevertheless, "and--I thought I would come to-day." "What made you come to-day?" he asked, an odd abruptness that almost amounted to roughness, in his voice. "Why to-day, of all days?" "I--don't know," she answered. "I believe I acted--on impulse. It just came into my head that I must come this morning, and--you know I am rather a creature of impulse--and I came--straight away." "It is so curious you should have come to-day," he persisted, still with that odd abruptness of voice and manner. "You have come in time to see my boats burnt." "Your--boats--burnt?" her voice was puzzled; she looked into his face with less of embarrassment, because in some indefinite way she felt that he was more embarrassed than she, and it gave her courage. "Why are you burning boats?" "Because, as I told you when I came to see you, I am giving up the life here, giving it up altogether, irrevocably, for always. There is to be no turning back." "No turning back," she repeated softly, her eyes watching the changing expressions on his face. "Why no turning back?" "Why? Because I have made up my mind to begin a new life, in a new world, and--when I make up my mind a thing must be done, I generally carry it through." "Ah!" she said. "You generally carry it through?" "Yes," he spoke almost harshly. "The boats will be burnt to-day--finally burnt." She stood very still in the sunlight, her pretty head bent down, her hands slowly moving over the knob of the dainty sunshade she carried, a little smile lurking about the corners of her mouth; her eyes fixed on the faded colours of the Turkey carpet. "I think--I should like--to be here for the burning of the boats," she said. "It sounds so--subversive--so final."