THEY went into the smoking-room, and whilst uncle Solon was plunging his arms up to the elbows into a mahogany cabinet full of cigars with his name on the bands, Lewis said:-- "I have a feeling that it was in the silence of a seraglio like this in Trieste that you strangled my poor little San Lucido venture." "Ah I to my jealous lord let my poor head be borne." "Don't make fun of this house," answered Irene; "I love it just as it is. I lived here as a girl; I was a day boarder at a Maida Vale school then, and I was captain of the hockey team. I used to come back here every evening when the fog begins to thicken and when the street singers cast fantastic shadows on the walls and smile behind their make-up. Yesterday I went up to my old room under the roof; it has been empty since I left it. My bed, a very hard one, where I used to weave ridiculous dreams, still stood in the corner." "What sort of dreams?" "I've forgotten now. There's a stuffed cuckoo which I brought back from Interlaken still there." "I want to see it, this room of yours." "Why?" "Just because ..." "Just as you like," said Irene simply, without waiting to be begged. "I collect famous rooms," said Lewis. "I have already seen Cecil Rhodes' college rooms with his old cricket bat and his rhinoceros heads; Gaby Deslys' room in Knightsbridge after her death: there I found her old mother who had come from Marseilles too late, crying before a golden sun rising above a cream velvet bed; the ceiling was a painted sky in which aeroplanes were manœuvring: they were all the different machines flown by the pilot who was her lover at that time.... And again, the bedroom of the Empress Zita at Schœnbrunn, with her soap and towel just as she left them in her flight. But all this is quite beside the point...." Irene's room was enamelled white with a green ribbon running along it like a water line, and two shiny chintz curtains covered with hollyhocks. It was what thirty years ago would have been called a symphony in white. Lewis went up to her. "You are still only a girl." She stepped back. "Let me alone." Her nose twitched and her narrow nostrils dilated. Her brow, swept clear of the abundant hair that grew slightly over her temples, caught the light. Lewis put his hands on her shoulders. "I adore your prim face with all the romance lurking in it. Give me your hand. Open it. Look, there I am in the middle of your line of Fate; here I am again after climbing this mountain. You see: I've got to get there sometime...." "I am always told that I've got a man's hand, the hand of a pioneer, the fingers of a banker, made to handle money; will you let me alone ..." "Your slim figure, your long neck, your slender arms, your narrow waist..." "Let me alone." "Your honest mouth and your Byzantine eyes, like the eyes in a peacock's tail. I don't want you to be my mistress." "Let me alone." "Will you marry me?" "Certainly not. I've been married once; that's enough for me."