The garden was an irregular nook with something or the shape of a triangle, enclosed between the back wall of the house and a wing flung out at a right angle. The base of the triangle was an old brick wall, breast-high, which began at the end of the house wall and curved outwards until it reached the wing. Over this wall the eye looked through air to the olive-planted slope of a mountain. For the house was built on the brink of the precipice, it was in a line with the Alameda, though divided from it by the great chasm, and if one leaned over the crumbling wall built long ago by the Moors, one had an impression that one ought to see the waves churning at the foot of the rock and to hear a faint moaning of the sea; so that the sight of the level carpet of the plain continually surprised the eyes. Into this garden Miranda brought M. Fournier. No windows overlooked it, for those which gave light to Miranda's parlour were in the end and the other side of the wing, and so commanded the valley without commanding this enclosure. A little flagged causeway opened a path between the flowers to the nook between the wing of the house and the old wall, where two lounge chairs invited use. Miranda seated herself in one of these chairs and with a gesture offered the other to M. Fournier. M. Fournier, however, took no heed of the invitation. He had eyes only for Miranda's face. He held his hat in one hand, and with a coloured handkerchief continually mopped his forehead, a dusty perspiring image of anxiety. "You come from my husband?" said Miranda. M. Fournier's face lightened. "Ah, then, you know--" "That he is alive? Yes. You come from him?" "From him, no; on his behalf, yes." Miranda smiled at the subtle distinction. "You need money, of course," she said drily. "How much do you want? You have, no doubt, some authority from my husband." The little Belgian's anxiety gave place to offended pride. "We do not need money, neither he nor I; but as for authority, perhaps this will serve." He drew from his pocket a soiled scrap of paper and handed it to Miranda. The paper, as she could see from the blue lines, the shape, and the jagged border, had been torn from a small pocketbook. It was so crumpled and soiled that a few words scribbled with a pencil on the outside in Arabic were barely visible. Miranda unfolded the paper slowly, for the mere look of it was sinister. The words within were written also in pencil, and her face altered as she read them. "What does J. B. mean?" she asked. "J. B. are the initials of the name he took." "You are sure this comes from my husband? I do not recognise his hand." "Quite sure."