"We might walk across the Park if you preferred it," he suggested; "and have tea at that place in Kensington Gardens? It would be quieter there." She agreed to that willingly. She wanted to be alone with him. The crowd made her nervous and self-conscious this afternoon. Always before, she had delighted in moving among a crowd, appreciating and enjoying the casual glances of admiration she received. Today she was afraid of being noticed. She had a queer feeling that these smart, clever people in the Park might see through her, if they stared too closely. Just what they would discover she did not know; but she suffered a disquieting qualm of uneasiness whenever she saw any one observing her with attention. They cut across the grass and, leaving the Serpentine on their left, found two chairs in a quiet spot under the trees. Here, at least, they were quite unwatched, but still Rachel found it impossible to regain the relations that had existed between her and Adrian when they had parted a month earlier. And Adrian, too, it seemed, was staring at her with a new, inquisitive scrutiny. "Why do you look at me like that?" she broke out at last. "Do you notice any difference in me, or what? You--you've been staring so!" "Difference!" he repeated. "Well, I told you just now, didn't I, that you were different this afternoon?" "Yes, but in what way?" she asked. "Do I--do I look different?" He paused a little judiciously over his answer. "N--no," he hesitated. "There's something, though. Don't be offended, will you, if I say that you don't seem to be quite yourself to-day; not quite natural. I miss a rather characteristic expression of yours. You've never once looked at me with that rather tolerating air you used to put on." "It was a horrid air," she said sharply. "I've made up my mind to cure myself of it." "Oh! no, don't," he protested. "It wasn't at all horrid. It was--don't think I'm trying to pay you a compliment--it was, well, charming. I've missed it dreadfully." She turned and looked at him, determined to try an experiment. "This sort of air, do you mean?" she asked, and with a sickening sensation of presenting the very gestures and appearance of her aunt, she regarded him under lowered eyelids with an expression of faintly supercilious approval. His smile at once thanked and answered her. "But it's an abominable look," she exclaimed. "The look of an old, old, painted woman, vain, ridiculous." He stared at her in amazement. "How absurd!" he protested. "Why, it's _you_; and you're certainly not old or painted nor unduly vain, and no one could say you were ridiculous." "And you want me to look like that?" she asked. "It's--it's so _you_," he said shyly.