He gazed at her from the door for some moments, and then went slowly downstairs and into the diningroom. A footman and the butler were in waiting. He sent them away, telling the latter that Mrs. Wingfield was a little knocked up by the attention of the townspeople, and would probably not come downstairs for some time; there was no need for the servants to stay up. She came down after an interval, and he persuaded her to eat something and to drink a glass of the “cup” which had been prepared in accordance with an old still-room recipe in the Wingfield family. Afterwards they went out together upon the terrace, and he lit a cigar. They did not talk much, and when they did, it was without even the most distant allusion to the shadow that was hanging over their life. When there had been a long interval of silence between them, they seated themselves on the Madeira chairs, and he told her how on that evening long ago--so very long ago--more than two months ago--he had sat there longing for her to be beside him; how he had put his face down to the cushion thinking what a joy it would be to find her face close to his. “And now here it has all come to pass,” he said. “This is the very chair and the cushion, and the face I longed for.” He sat on the edge of her chair and laid a caressing hand upon her hair; but he did not put his face down to hers--he could not have done so, for her face was turned to the cushion; but even then her sobs were not quite smothered. He could feel every throb as his hand lay upon her forehead. He made no attempt to restrain her. He had an intuition--it was a night of instincts--that her tears would do much more to soothe her than it would be in his power to do. For an hour they remained there, silent in the majestic silence of the summer night. It was without the uttering of a word that she rose and stood in front of him at last. He kissed her quietly on the forehead and she passed into the house through the open glass door, and he was left alone. He threw himself down on his chair once more, but only remained there for a minute. He sprang to his feet in the impulse of a sudden thought. He went down by the terrace steps to the shrubberies, walking quickly but stealthily, and moving along among the solid black masses of the clipped boxes and laurels and bay trees. So he had stalked a tiger that he wanted to kill on his last night at Kashmir. He moved stealthily from brake to brake as though he expected to come upon an enemy skulking there. And then he crossed by the fountains and the stone-work of crescent seats and mutilated goddesses and leering satyrs, into the park and on to the avenue that bent away from the country road. He moved toward the entrance gates and the lodge with the same stealth of the animal who is hunting another animal, pausing every now and again among the trees to listen for the sound of footfalls.