Armitage looked at her for a second. "Do you mind if I take a roundabout way? I should like to talk to you." Anne returned his gaze without speaking. Then she nodded slowly. "Yes, if you like," she said. "Thank you." He drove the car up the steep side streets, across Bellevue Avenue, and then headed into a little lane. Here he stopped. Overhead ash and beech and maple trees formed a continuous arch. Gray stone walls hedged either side. Beyond each line of wall, pleasant orchards stretched away. The sidewalks were velvet grass. Birds of brilliant plumage flashed among the foliage and their twittering cries were the only sounds. Patches of gold sunlight lay under the orchard trees, level rays flowed heavily through the branches and rested on the moss-grown stones. The pastoral beauty, the great serenity, the utter peace seemed to preclude words. And the spell was immediately upon the two. The down-turned brim of her hat shaded her eyes, but permitted sunlight to lie upon her mouth and chin and to rest where her hair rippled and flowed about her bare neck. She raised her face--and her eyes, even, level, wondering, sought his. His eyes were the first to fall, but in them she knew what she had read. Now the sunlight had fallen so low that it lay on her like a garment of light--she seemed some daughter of Hesperus, glorified. The waning afternoon had grown cooler and several blue-white clouds went careening overhead. She looked at them. "How beautiful!" she said. Then she looked at him again with her steady eyes. "You wished to talk, you said." Jack nodded. "Yes, I wish to, but I--I don't know exactly how to say it." She was smiling now. "How may I help you?" He shook his head doggedly. "I am a sailor, Miss Wellington." "You mean I am to hear plain sailor talk?" she quoted. "Good. I am ready." He began with the expression of a man taking a plunge. "Miss Wellington, I could say a great deal so far--so far as I am concerned, that I have no right to say, now. . . . But--are you going to marry Prince Koltsoff?" She started forward and then sank back. "You must not ask that," she said. "I know--I understand," he said rapidly, "but--but--you mustn't marry him, you know." "_Must n't!_" "Miss Wellington, I know, it is none of my business. And yet--Don't you know," he added fiercely, "what a girl you are? I know. I have seen! You are radiant, Miss Wellington, in spirit as in face. Any man knowing what Koltsoff is, who could sit back and let you waste yourself on him would be a pup. Thornton, of the _Jefferson_, has his record. Write to Walker, _attache_ at St. Petersburg, or Cook at Paris, or Miller at London--they will tell you. Why, even in Newport--" Jack paused in his headlong outburst and then continued more deliberately.