Mills changed his attitude to look at him fixedly for a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair and with interest—I don’t mean curiosity, I mean interest: “Does anybody know besides the two parties concerned?” he asked, with something as it were renewed (or was it refreshed?) in his unmoved quietness. “I ask because one has never heard any tales. I remember one evening in a restaurant seeing a man come in with a lady—a beautiful lady—very particularly beautiful, as though she had been stolen out of Mahomet’s paradise. With Doña Rita it can’t be anything as definite as that. But speaking of her in the same strain, I’ve always felt that she looked as though Allègre had caught her in the precincts of some temple . . . in the mountains.” I was delighted. I had never heard before a woman spoken about in that way, a real live woman that is, not a woman in a book. For this was no poetry and yet it seemed to put her in the category of visions. And I would have lost myself in it if Mr. Blunt had not, most unexpectedly, addressed himself to me. “I told you that man was as fine as a needle.” And then to Mills: “Out of a temple? We know what that means.” His dark eyes flashed: “And must it be really in the mountains?” he added. “Or in a desert,” conceded Mills, “if you prefer that. There have been temples in deserts, you know.” Blunt had calmed down suddenly and assumed a nonchalant pose. “As a matter of fact, Henry Allègre caught her very early one morning in his own old garden full of thrushes and other small birds. She was sitting on a stone, a fragment of some old balustrade, with her feet in the damp grass, and reading a tattered book of some kind. She had on a short, black, two-penny frock (_une petite robe de deux sous_) and there was a hole in one of her stockings. She raised her eyes and saw him looking down at her thoughtfully over that ambrosian beard of his, like Jove at a mortal. They exchanged a good long stare, for at first she was too startled to move; and then he murmured, “_Restez donc_.” She lowered her eyes again on her book and after a while heard him walk away on the path. Her heart thumped while she listened to the little birds filling the air with their noise. She was not frightened. I am telling you this positively because she has told me the tale herself. What better authority can you have . . .?” Blunt paused. “That’s true. She’s not the sort of person to lie about her own sensations,” murmured Mills above his clasped hands.