They sat down on the bench in the third room, opposite the colonnade by Watteau, to which his thoughts frequently went, while telling her how, when cruising among the Greek Islands, he had often seen her, sometimes sitting in the music-room playing the virginal, sometimes walking in the ornamental park under a wet, grey sky, a somewhat desolate figure hurrying through shadows of storm. "How strange you should think all that. It is quite true. I often walked in that hateful park." "You will never be able to stand another winter in Dulwich." She raised her eyes, and he noticed with an inward glee their little frightened look. "I thought of you in that ornamental park watching London from the crest of the hill; and I thought of London--great, unconscious London--waiting to be awakened with the chime of your voice." She turned her head aside, overcome by his praise, and he exulted, seeing the soft rose tint mount into the whiteness of her face. "You must not say such things to me. How you do know how to praise!" "You don't realise how wonderful you are." "You should not say such things, for if they are not true, I shall be so miserable." "Of course they are true," he said, hushing his voice; and in his exultation there was a savour of cruelty. "You don't realise how wonderful your story is. As I sailed through the Greek Isles, I thought less and less of that horrid, red-haired woman; your face, dim at first, grew clearer and clearer.... All my thoughts, all things converged to you and were absorbed in you, until, one day on the deck, I felt that you were unhappy; the knowledge came, how and whence I know not; I only know that the impulse to return was irresistible. I called to the skipper, and told him to put her head about." "Then you did think of me whilst you were away?" Evelyn looked at him with her soft, female eyes, and meeting his keen, bright, male eyes, she drew away from him with a little dread. Immediately after, this sensation of dread gave way to a delicious joy; an irresponsible joy deep down in her heart, a joy so intimate that she was thankful to know that none could know it but herself. Her woman's instinct told her that many women had loved him. She suspected that the little lilt in his voice, and the glance that accompanied it, were the relics of an old love affair. She hoped it was not a survival of Georgina. "It must be nearly one o'clock. It is time for you to come to talk to father about the Greek hymn." "Let's look at this picture first--'The Fête beneath the Colonnade'--it is one of the most beautiful things in the world." CHAPTER FIVE