Then he took her hand, and led her to the door. And Lord St. Amant, quoting Champmélé, turned to his old love: "'Ah! Madame--quelle jolie chose qu'un baiser!'" he murmured, and ere the door had quite closed behind Oliver he, too, had put his arm with a caressing gesture round her shoulder, and drawn her to him, with the whispered words, "Letty--don't think me an old fool!" And then, "Oh, Letty! Do you remember the first time----" And though she made no answer, he knew she did remember, like himself only too well, the wild, winter afternoon, nearer forty than thirty years ago, when they two had been caught alone, far from home, in a great storm--the wild weather responding to their wild mood. They had taken shelter in a deserted, half-ruined barn, a survival of the days when England had still great granaries. And there, throwing everything aside--the insistent promptings of honour, and the less insistent promptings of prudence--St. Amant had kissed Letty.... He remembered, even now, the thrill of mingled rapture, shame, gratitude, triumph, and stinging self-rebuke, which had accompanied that first long clinging kiss. The next day he had left the Abbey for the Continent, and when, at last, he had come back, he had himself again well in hand.... Only yesterday the shooters had gone by that old seventeenth-century barn, of which nothing now remained but thick low walls, and as he had tramped by the spot, so alone with his memories, if outwardly so companioned, there had swept over his heart, that heart which was still susceptible to every keen emotion, a feeling of agonised regret for what had--and what had not been. "Ah, Letty," he said huskily, "you've been the best friend man ever had! Don't you think the time has come for two such old friends as you and I have been never to part? It isn't as if I had a great deal of time left." * * * * * An hour later Lord St. Amant was sitting up in bed, reading the fourth volume of a certain delightful edition of the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint Simon. He was feeling happier than he had felt for a very long time--stirred and touched too, as he had not thought to be again. Complacently he reminded himself of the successful, the brilliantly successful, elderly marriages he had known in his time. 'Twas odd when one came to think of it, but he couldn't remember one such which had turned out a failure! Dear Letty--who had known how to pass imperceptibly from youth to age with such a fine, measured dignity, while retaining so much which had made her as a girl and as an older woman the most delightful and stimulating of companions. What an agreeable difference her presence would make to his existence as he went slowly down into the shadows! He shuddered a little--the thought of old age, of real old age, becoming suddenly, vividly repugnant.