He returned with certain information, absorbed by Senhouse with far-sighted patient eyes and in silence. The only indication he afforded was inscrutable. His cheek-bones twitched flickeringly, like summer lightning about the hills. Sanchia, Glyde said, was well and in London. She was living in a street off Berkeley Square, with an old lady who wore side-curls and shawls, and drove out every afternoon in a barouche with two stout horses and two lean men-servants. Sanchia sometimes accompanied her, stiff and pliant at once, bright-eyed and faintly coloured. She was taken about to parties also, and to the opera--and very often there were parties at the old lady's house--carriage-company, and gentleman in furred coats, who came in hansom cabs. He thought that she had suitors. There was a tall, thin man who came very often in the afternoons. He was sallow and melancholy, and wore a silk muffler day and night. Glyde thought that he was a foreigner, perhaps a Hungarian or Pole. He had seen Sanchia often, but she could not have caught a glimpse of him. He admitted that he had haunted the house, had seen her come out and go in, knew when she dressed for dinner and when she went to bed. Long practice had acquainted him with the significance of light and darkness seen through chinks in shutters. “I know her room,” he said, “and the times of her lights. She looks out over the streets towards the Park twice every night--once when she is dressed, and once before she goes to bed. It is as if she is saying her prayers. She looks long to the west, very seriously. I think her lips move. I believe that she always does it.” Senhouse, who may have been listening, bowed his head to his knees, below his clasped hands. “Twice she looked full at me without knowing me. Why should she know me now? Her pale and serious face, master, was as beautiful as the winter moon, as remote from us and our little affairs. No words of mine can express to you the outward splendour of her neck and bosom. She was uncovered for a party at the house. In the morning she came out to walk. You know her way, how she glides rather than seems to move her feet--the soaring, even motion of a sea-bird. She walked across the Park, and I followed, praising God, whose image she is. On the further side the Pole met her in his furs, and she walked with him for an hour in the sun. She had no wrappage to hide her blissful shape. Close-fitted, erect, free-moving, gracious as a young birch-tree. Master, she is the Holy One.” “You played Peeping Tom, my ingenuous young friend,” said Senhouse, who was fastidious in such matters. But Clyde cried out, “God forbid! Are you prying when you look at the sun! Master, you need not grudge the Pole. He is nothing.” “I grudge no man anything he can get of her,” said Senhouse. “He will get precisely what lies within his scope.” “He has the eyes of a rat,” Glyde said.