As a hurrying tug puffs up to the liner that it is to tow safely into port, Chitta puffed up to her mistress. She met a Cartaret, could she have guessed it, as hopeless as she wanted him to be. He did his best to put from him all desire to unravel the mystery, and for some days he was again content to remain Vitoria's unquestioning friend. She had told him that she could not marry him: nothing could have been plainer. What more could he gain by further enquiry? Did she mean that she loved somebody else whom she could not marry? Or did she mean that she loved, but could not marry--_him_? Cartaret highly resolved to take what good the gods provided: to remain her friend; to work on, in secret, for her comfort, and to be as happy as he could in so much of her companionship as she permitted him. He would never tell her that he loved her. And then, very early on an evening in May, Destiny, who had been somnolent under the soft influence of Spring, awoke and once more took a hand in Cartaret's affairs and those of the Lady of the Rose. Cartaret had just returned from a mission to Lepoittevin's shop and, having there disposed of a particularly bad picture, had put money in his purse: Chitta was waiting on the stairs and accepted the bulk of his earnings with her usual bad grace. He went into his studio, leaving the door ajar. The cool breeze of the Spring twilight fluttered the curtains; it bore upward the laughter of the concierge's children, playing at diavolo in the garden; it brought the fainter notes of the hurdy-gurdy, grinding out its music somewhere farther down the street. Somebody was tapping at the door. "Who is it?" he called. "It's--_I_," came the answer, with the least perceptible pause before the pronoun. "May I come in?" "Do," he said, and rose. Before he could reach the door, Vitoria had entered, closing it carefully behind her. He could see that she was in her student's blouse; tendrils of her hair, slightly disarrayed, curled about the nape of her white neck; her delicate nostrils were extended and her manner strangely quiet. "This is good of you," he gratefully began. "I didn't expect----" "What is this that you have been doing?" Her tone, though low, was hasty. Cartaret bewilderedly realized that she was angry. Before he could reply, she had repeated her question: "Sir, what is this that you have been doing?" "I don't understand." He had drawn away from her, his face unmistakably expressive of his puzzled pain. "You have been---- oh, that I should live to say it!--you have been giving money to my maid." He drew back farther now. He was detected; he was ashamed. "Yes," he confessed; "I thought--You see, she gave me to understand that you were--were poor." "None of my family has ever taken charity of any man!"