Thorndyke believed--such is the folly of love--he would have known the house even if Crane had not mentioned the number. But the number was conclusive. It was an old-fashioned house, broad and low for a city house. It had been the advance guard of fashion. There was a little strip of garden and shrubbery at the side, where clipped cedars were formally set, and three great lilac-bushes were hastening into a bloom of purple splendour. The scent of the lilacs brought back the terrace on Lake Como, where lilacs also grew, and where he and Constance had spent those glowing and unforgotten hours--and by moonlight they had often sung together the old duet from Don Pasquale, “Oh, April Night!” Thorndyke, entranced and lost in visions, began to hum the old, old air. What strange power of restoring the past have old songs and the perfume of flowers long remembered! Thorndyke felt as in a dream; all the intervening years melted away; it was once more Como, with its moonlight, its flower-scents, its songs, its loves--and then he looked up and saw Constance Maitland standing before him. She had just returned from the ball--the carriage from which she had alighted was rolling off. As she met Thorndyke face to face on the sidewalk she started slightly, and her long white mantle slipped from her delicate bare shoulders to the ground. Her eyes met Thorndyke’s--everything was in that gaze except surprise. When two persons think of each other daily for many years, the strangeness is not in their meeting but in their separation. They had seen each other last on a moonlit night, and the sweet scent of lilacs was in the air--and now, after eighteen years, it was so alike! The moonlight was merciful to them both. Neither saw all of Time’s earmarks--Thorndyke saw none at all in Constance. Her girlish figure was quite unchanged. Her pale yellow ball-gown, the pearls around her throat, were youthfulness itself. She had never been remarkable for beauty, but her face showed no lines, her silky black hair, simply arranged, revealed none of the silver strands that were visible by daylight. Thorndyke received a distinct shock at her youthfulness. It was his lost Constance of the Villa Flora.