"You will be alone with her presently. Try and persuade her to marry you at once. There is nothing but an absurd scruple between you! Remember that always." "It is a scruple which up till now has been too strong for me," Wrayson remarked quietly. She measured him with her eyes, as though making a deliberate estimate of his powers. "A man," she said, "should be able to do much with the woman whom he cares for--the woman who cares for him." "If I could believe that," he murmured. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. He understood the gesture. "You are right," he declared, with more confidence. "I will do my best." She moved her head slowly, a sign of assent, also of dismissal. He rose to his feet. "Louise is on the terrace," she said. "Will you give me your arm? The Baron is there also. We will join them." They stepped through the high French windows on to the carpeted terrace. It seemed to Wrayson that they had passed into a veritable land of enchantment. The service of dinner had been a somewhat leisurely affair, and the hour was already late. The moon was slowly rising behind the trees, but the landscape was at present wrapped in the soft doubtful obscurity of a late twilight. The flowers, with whose perfume the air was faintly fragrant, remained unseen, or visible only in blurred outline; the tall trees, whose tops were unstirred by even the slightest breeze, stood out like silent sentinels against the violet sky. Madame de Melbain stopped short upon the threshold of the terrace, with head slightly thrown back, and half-closed eyes. "Suzanne was right," she murmured, "there is peace here--peace, if only it would last!" The Baron came hastily forward. He seemed to be eyeing Wrayson a little doubtfully. Madame de Melbain pointed down the avenue. "I think," she said, "that it would be pleasant to walk for a little way. Give me your arm, Baron. We will go first. Mr. Wrayson will follow with Louise." They descended the steps, crossed the lawn, and through a gate into the broad grass-grown avenue, cut through the woods to the road. Wrayson at first was silent, and Louise seemed a little nervous. More than once she started at the sound of a rabbit scurrying through the undergrowth. There was something a little mysterious about the otherwise profound silence of the impenetrable woods. Even their footsteps fell noiselessly upon the spongy turf. Wrayson spoke at last. They had fallen sufficiently far behind the others to be out of earshot. "Do you know what Madame de Melbain has been saying to me?" he asked. Louise turned her head a little. There was the faintest flicker of a smile about her lips. "I cannot imagine," she declared, looking once more straight ahead. "She has been inciting me to bold deeds," Wrayson said. "How should you like to be carried off in mediaeval fashion--married, willing or unwilling?" "Is that what Madame de Melbain has been recommending you to do?" she asked. He nodded.