But when he entered Dom Diego's lodging and saw the unexpected, forgotten Ianthe--Ianthe grown from that sweet child to matchless grace of early womanhood; Ianthe with her dark smiling eyes and her caressing voice and her gentle movements--then this resolution of passive silence was exchanged for a determination to fight desperately against discovery. In the glow of his soul, in the stir of youth and spring in his veins, in the melting rapture of his mood, that first sight of a beautiful girl's face bent smilingly to greet her father's guest had sufficed to set his heart aflame with a new emotion, sweet, riotous, sacred. What a merry supper-party was that; each dish eaten with the sauce of joyous memories! How gaily he rallied Ianthe on her childish ways and sayings! Of course, she remembered him, she said, and the toys and flowers, and told how comically he had puckered his brow in argumentation with her father. Yes, he had the same funny lines still, and once she touched his forehead lightly for an instant with her slender fingers in facetious demonstration, and he trembled in painful rapture. And she played on her lute, too, on the lute he had given her of old, those slender fingers making ravishing music on the many-stringed instrument, though her pose as she played was more witching still. What a beautiful glimpse of white shoulders and dainty lace her straight-cut black bodice permitted! He left the house drunk, exalted, and as the cold night air smote the forehead she had touched he was thrilled with fiery energy. He was young still, thank God, though fifteen years had been eaten out of his life, and he had thought himself as old and gray as the marshes. He was young still, he told himself fiercely, defiantly. At home his note-book lay open, as usual, on his desk, like a friend waiting to hear what thoughts had come to him in his lonely walk. How far off and alien seemed this cold confidant now, how irrelevant, and yet, when his eye glanced curiously at his last recorded sentence, how relevant! "All evils come from not following Right Reason and the Law of Nature." How true! How true! He had followed neither Right Reason nor the Law of Nature. X