Dicky nudged his friend impatiently into silence, feeling that speech destroyed the spell, and awoke unwelcome recollections of the ordinary rules of social life which they were bluntly ignoring. In one moment they would walk on certainly. In the meantime, Dicky thrust his arm through that of his friend, and turned slowly round as a preliminary movement, keeping his eyes, however, still fixed upon the veiled houri. She remained immovable for a moment, and then from under the pale folds of rough silk appeared two slender arms of an ivory tint, several shades lighter than that of her face. They were bare to the shoulder, laden with massive bracelets, some silver, some silver-gilt, that stood out like cables round the soft flesh, or glittered with sparkling pendants of the precious metal: as, her face alight with girlish gaiety, she slowly advanced her small, lithe, olive-tinted hands, with the fingers curved ready to close upon the young man’s eyes, a couple of bracelets slid down her left arm with a little clash, which, though inaudible to the two spectators outside the window, was evidently the means of announcing her presence to her companion. He started up, and, turning round, seized her wrists as she attempted to spring, laughing, away from him. She was now so far back in the room that Massey and Dicky Wood caught only a vague, indistinct glimpse of long folds of soft white stuff under the silken veil, and of a crimson sash bound loosely round the hips of the little figure that crouched, laughing, against the wall. But they saw the eyes, such long, roguish, languishing eyes, that Massey felt that what heart his small and early loves had left to him was gone again, while even the more self-contained Dicky felt an odd and unaccustomed sensation, which he was afterwards unromantic enough to compare to a premonitory symptom of sea-sickness. At that moment, however, the girl suddenly caught sight of the faces outside, and directed her companion’s attention to the window. As he turned abruptly, drew back into himself with a sudden expression of reserved and haughty indignation, and approached the window to draw down the blind, the girl, with a ringing laugh of mischief, which even the lads outside could hear, took advantage of his momentary retreat to escape. The two young men, on finding they were discovered, walked on at once with involuntary and guilty haste, without at first speaking. Massey broke the silence with a deep sigh, and stepping into the road, hunted out the name of the street and entered it in his pocket-book. “No. 36, Mary Street,” he murmured devoutly. “You will dare to show your face here again then?” “My face! I mean to show more than my face next time. I shall go boldly in and buy up the shop.”