That he should know her story, as he obviously did, was not so disconcerting to her as it would have been to most young women. Taciturn as she was, it was not by reason of timidity, but rather that her own motives seemed too clear to her to be worth stating. She was, perhaps, rather given to assume her prerogative right to be different. Her first thought, therefore, was that she was saved the trouble of explaining herself, and her second that it was satisfactory to have a friend who understood her without explanations. As for Morosine, he may or may not have felt that he had broken the ice; he pushed forward, at any rate, as if he had clear water in front of him. Sanchia felt, when she next met him, that their acquaintance had entered on a new phase. Then suddenly, before she knew where she was, her fate was upon her. It was in the Park on a fine Sunday forenoon in February. She was with Lady Maria, and had met with Melusine and Gerald Scales. Morosine also, seeing her and meeting her eyes, instantly left his companion and came to greet her, hat in hand. He addressed himself to her exclusively, having saluted Lady Maria; but she named her sister, and he saluted her too. Gerald Scales, bronzed, plump, and very full in the eye, having looked the newcomer over, decided against him, and gave him a shoulder. “Foreign beggar,” was the conclusion he came to, which does credit to his perspicacity, because the Pole had a very English appearance, and Scales himself the look of a Jew. When they turned to walk, Morosine took the side next Sanchia, and though he talked to both ladies, so contrived that she should read more in what he said than her sister. He did it deftly, but continuously. Sanchia was entertained, slightly excited, and ended by taking part in the game of skill. It is impossible to say by how much this sort of thing increased the intimacy already established between the pair. It was by so much, at least, that when Melusine joined her husband, by dropping behind and waiting for him to come up with, the old lady, it came as no sort of shock to Sanchia that he took up the talk where he had ended it in the gallery. “You have been to church, I see. But you are not a Christian?” He did not look at her. Nor did she turn her head to reply. “I don't know. Nominally, at least; fitfully, at the most.” “That must be the outside of it,” he continued. “The thing is the antithesis of the Hellenic ideal--which is yours. Your seemingly passive martyr is really in an ecstasy. He aims at outraging Nature; begins by despising and ends by dreading it. Nature, however, has ways of revenging herself.” “Yes, indeed,” said Sanchia soberly. They walked on together, she by this time very much absorbed. She was not conscious of the shifting crowd, the lifting of hats, the chatter, the yapping dogs that ran in and out of women's skirts. Presently he spoke again. “You believe that you failed?” Her voice came low. “I know that I failed.”