She placed a volume in his hand and swung out of the room, tall, fresh, and graceful. Wrayson watched her admiringly. In her perfect naturalness and unaffected good-humour, she reminded him a good deal of her father, but curiously enough there was some other likeness which appealed to him even more powerfully, and yet which he was unable to identify. It puzzled him so that for a moment or two after her departure he sat watching the door through which she had disappeared, with a slight frown upon his forehead. She was undoubtedly charming, and yet something in connection with her seemed to impress him with an impending sense of trouble. Everything about her person and manners was frank and girlish, and yet she was certainly recalling to his mind things that he had been struggling all the afternoon to forget. Already he began to feel the clouds of nervousness and depression stealing down upon him. He struck the table with his clenched fist. He would have none of it. Outside was the delicious sunshine, through the open window stole in the perfume of the roses which covered the wall, and mignonette from the trim borders, and stocks from the bed fringing the lawn. The murmur of pleasant conversation was incessant and musical. For a time Wrayson had escaped. He swore to himself that he would go back no more into bondage; that he would dwell no more upon the horrors through which he had lived. He would take hold of the pleasant things of life with both hands, and grip them tightly. A man should be master of his thoughts, not the slave of unwilling memories. He would choose for himself whither they should lead him; he would fight with all his nerve and will against the unholy fascination of those few thrilling hours. He looked impatiently towards the door, and longed for the return of his late companion that he might continue his half-laughing flirtation. Then he remembered the album still upon his knee, and opened it quickly. He had dabbled a little in photography; he would find something here to keep his thoughts from the forbidden place. And he did indeed find something--something which set his heart thumping, and drew all the colour, which the sun and vigorous exercise had brought, from his cheeks; something at which he stared with wide-open eyes, which he held before him with trembling, nerveless fingers. The picture of a woman! The picture of her! It had lain loose in the book, with its back towards him. Only chance made him turn it over. As he looked he understood. There was the likeness, such likeness as there may be between a beautiful woman, a little sad, a little scornful, with the faint lines of mockery about her curving lips, the world-weary light in her distant eyes, and the fresh, ingenuous girl with whom he had been bandying pleasantries during the last few hours. He had felt it unknowingly. He realized it now, and the thought of what it might mean made him catch at his breath like a drowning man. Then she came in.