When last he had kissed her--it had been in the orchard; the Professor had been witness to it--Malvina had remained quite passive, only that curious little smile about her lips. But now an odd thing happened. A quivering seemed to pass through all her body, so that it swayed and trembled. The Professor feared she was going to fall; and, maybe to save herself, she put up her arms about Commander Raffleton's neck, and with a strange low cry--it sounded to the Professor like the cry one sometimes hears at night from some little dying creature of the woods--she clung to him sobbing. It must have been a while later when the chiming of the clock recalled to the Professor the appointment with Mrs. Marigold. "You will only just have time," he said, gently seeking to release her. "I'll promise to keep him till you come back." And as Malvina did not seem to understand, he reminded her. But still she made no movement, save for a little gesture of the hands as if she were seeking to lay hold of something unseen. And then she dropped her arms and looked from one of them to the other. The Professor did not think of it at the time, but remembered afterwards; that strange aloofness of hers, as if she were looking at you from another world. One no longer felt it. "I am so sorry," she said. "It is too late. I am only a woman." And Mrs. Marigold is still thinking. THE PROLOGUE. And here follows the Prologue. It ought, of course, to have been written first, but nobody knew of it until quite the end entirely. It was told to Commander Raffleton by a French comrade, who in days of peace had been a painter, mingling with others of his kind, especially such as found their inspiration in the wide horizons and legend-haunted dells of old-world Brittany. Afterwards the Commander told it to the Professor, and the Professor's only stipulation was that it should not be told to the Doctor, at least for a time. For the Doctor would see in it only confirmation for his own narrow sense-bound theories, while to the Professor it confirmed beyond a doubt the absolute truth of this story.