'Have I your ladyship's leave to try my powers of persuasion with Colonel Montague?' Very much to Kelly's surprise she moved towards him, like one walking in her sleep. 'You are bleeding,' she said, and stanched with her handkerchief some drops from his brow, where it had been cut by the broken edges of the ivory fan. Then she went again into a bitter fit of weeping, which Kelly could never bear to see in a woman. She may have remembered the snow upon the lawn, years ago, and a moment's vision of white honour. Then she stinted in her crying as suddenly as she had begun; in a time incredibly short you could not tell that she had wept. 'You must carry a token. I must write. Oh my shame!' she said, and sitting down to a scrutoire, wrote rapidly and briefly, sanded the paper, and offered it open to Kelly. 'I cannot see it; your ladyship must seal it,' he said, which she did with a head of Cicero. George took the note, and said: 'Now time presses, madam. I must be gone. I trust that, if not now, at least later, you may forgive me.' Her lips moved, but no words came forth. Kelly made his bow, and so took leave of Smilinda, she gnawing her lips, as she watched him with her inscrutable eyes, moodily pushing to and fro with her foot the broken pieces of the fan on the polished floor. There came into Kelly's fancy his parting view of Rose at Avignon, her face framed among the vine leaves, in the open window; she leaning forth, with a forced smile on her dear lips and waving her kerchief in farewell. A light wind was stirring her soft hair at that time, and she crying '_Au revoir_! _Au revoir!_ There was a scent of lilacs from the garden in the air of April, George remembered, and now the candles were dying in the sconces with a stench. With these contrasted pictures of two women and two farewells in his fancy, Kelly was descending the wide empty staircase, not knowing too well where he went. Something seemed to stir, he lifted his eyes and before him he saw again the appearance of his King: the King, young and happy, and as beautiful as the dawn that was stealing into the room and dimming the lustres on the stairs. Then the appearance moved aside, and Kelly found himself gazing into a great empty mirror that hung on the wall, facing the gallery above. Lord Sidney Beauclerk, in fact, had not left the house with the other guests, and Kelly, remembering, laughed aloud as he reached the fresh air without. CHAPTER XXII AN ECLOGUE WHICH DEMONSTRATES THE PASTORAL SIMPLICITY OF CORYDON AND STREPHON