I stopped. Remembering why I had not told Penelope, I deemed it wiser to be evasive. I remembered, too, that in my joy at seeing her again I had been taking it for granted that she was still Penelope Blight. The gulf between us, which had been closing so fast, yawned again. "Tell me," said I in undisguised eagerness, "are you married, Penelope?" Then she laughed, and in the gay ring of her laughter, I read her answer. She stepped back to a stone bench and seated herself, and I took a place beside her, watching as she made circles in the sand with the point of her parasol. There were a thousand commonplace questions that I might have asked her, but I was contented with the silence. It mattered little to me how she came there. It was enough that she was at my side. It mattered little to me that Bennett and his brother might have settled their dispute long since and be hunting for me, for I had made my farewell to them. I was home. I intended to stay at home. So I, too, fell to making circles in the sand, with my stick. Then Penelope looked up and asked me: "David, how do you come to be here, in this out-of-the-way Italian town? I thought you were in the Sudan. Uncle Rufus told me that you were in the Sudan. That is how I happened to hear it. He always insists on reading to me everything of yours he can find--rather bores me, in fact, sometimes--not, of course, that I haven't been interested in what you were doing." She spoke so coldly that I feared that, after all, I had best go my way with Bennett and his brother. I told her how I had travelled with them, and how the motor had broken down, and how my finding her was by the barest chance, for in a few hours I should have been on my way to Florence. "It's strange," she said. "Our motor broke down, too, last night--just as we reached the gates; but this afternoon we hope to be off again to Rome." "We?" I questioned. "Uncle Rufus and I," she said. "And Mrs. Bannister?" "Married a year ago to a rich broker," she answered, laughing. "How long I have been away!" I exclaimed.