Among the persons they spoke of were Julian Crane and Annette. Thorndyke volunteered the suggestion that Crane was passing through some sort of a crisis--he was so changed, so silent where he was formerly talkative, so full of vague exultation and of equally vague depression. Thorndyke had seen Annette and the children. Annette had asked to be remembered to Miss Maitland, and Constance replied that she should call at once to see Mrs. Crane. She was not particularly interested in Julian Crane’s crises, except that she said, woman fashion, that he ought to be more attentive to his wife. Thorndyke then mentioned that Senator Mulligan was in town, at which they both laughed. But soon the conversation got down to the you and I--the books each had read, the thoughts each had pondered, the places each had been. Constance had remained continuously at Malvern Court from June until late in November. She had had a succession of house-parties during the summer, but in the golden autumn she had been quite alone. “It was the sweetest, the most peaceful life you can imagine,” she said, thoughtfully. “All the world was shut out, except Virginia cousins, but I even escaped most of them. All day I was out in the woods and lanes, riding or driving or walking, and in the evening, with a wood fire, a book, a piano, and a lamp--it was company enough, yet it was solitude itself. It was like Omar’s shady tree and loaf of bread and jug of wine and book of verse.” “And thou,” added Thorndyke, under his breath. He was watching her with a silent rapture which possessed him on meeting her after an absence. She surely had the softest and sweetest voice in the world, and those charming tricks of pronunciation--she called solitude “solee-tude” and piano “pe-arno,” and was quite unconscious of it, and bitterly denied any difference between her speech and Thorndyke’s. Constance was conscious of the adoring look in Thorndyke’s eyes; she had heard the one suggestive word; perhaps it was that which caused a happy smile to flicker for a moment on her lips, revealing the faint, elusive dimple in her cheek, but she continued as if she had neither heard, nor seen, nor understood. “I have heard about the solitude there is in crowds, but I never could find it so. I am so dreadfully sociable--Southern and Creole French, you know--that I always find troops of friends and acquaintances in a crowd. But in that solitary old country house in the autumn--that, if you please, was to be alone.” “You seem to have a passion for solitude,” said Thorndyke, rather crossly. “Oh, no, only a taste for it at times. I never contemplated with pleasure a solitary life, and I have a horror of a lonely old age.” What did she mean? Was she proposing to him? Thorndyke was a good deal staggered by this speech from the lady of his secret love. The time sped fast with them, and both of them started when a neighbouring clock struck seven. Constance rose at once.