He took some of the quieter ways past Charing Cross, where the city and the fields met in scattered gardens and narrow lanes. Apple boughs, already hung with fruit, drooped alluringly over high brick walls. Here and there came the scent of rosemary and sage, of clove-pinks, marjoram, and lavender. And through the bars of some iron gate you might see great sheaves of sweet-peas in bloom, or torch-lilies stiff and quaint, or rose-trees with the flowers falling and turning brown. In one of these narrow lanes, with a high wall upon the one side and a thorn-hedge upon the other, John Gore met the last soul on earth he expected to meet at such a moment—Barbara Purcell, alone, not even followed by a servant. However dreamily John Gore’s thoughts may have lingered amid the stately walks of my lord’s house at Bushy, he was surprised to see her before him in the flesh. She was dressed quietly, with a cloak over her shoulders, and the hood turned forward to cover her hair, so that she looked more like a shopkeeper’s daughter than a young madam from the atmosphere of St. James’s. There was no turning back for either of them in that narrow lane, even if either had desired to escape a meeting. John Gore saw her flush momentarily, with a glitter of something in the eyes wonderfully like anger. How symbolical that hedged-in pathway seemed to her—a pathway where fate could not be eluded, and where death followed her like a shadow! “I never thought to see you here!” She looked at him darkly with her sombre eyes—eyes that made him think of watchfulness and waiting. “Sometimes I come here and walk in the lanes. They are quiet, and one is not stared at.” “You should not walk here, though, when it is getting dusk.” “Oh, I am not afraid.” The unfeigned earnestness of the man betrayed a depth beyond the shallows of mere words. “Others—may be afraid for you. These paths that seem so sweet and green are often the night tracks of the vermin of the streets.” Their eyes met and appeared to exchange a challenge. “I have never been troubled here.” “God save the chance that you ever should. We can walk back together, now that we have met.” She had no excuse with which to parry his grave frankness. Had life promised another meaning she might have suffered herself to be touched by the message that his manhood seemed to utter. And to John Gore, walking at her side, the rose-trees that had bloomed in the quaint gardens were budding again into crimson flame. The high hedgerows were full of golden light, caught and held in the mysterious shadow-net of the dusk.