"It is perfectly true," she answered. There was silence between us for several minutes. One of the footmen came softly in to see whether we required a marker, and finding us talking, withdrew. I was determined that the onus of further speech should remain with her. "You are surprised?" she asked at last. "Very." "And why?" "I scarcely know," I answered, "except that I have never associated the thought of marriage with Colonel Ray, and he is very much older than you." "Yes, he is a great deal older," she answered. "I think that his history has been rather a sad one. He was in love for many years with a woman who married--some one else. I have always felt sorry for him ever since I was a little girl." "Do you know who that woman was?" "I have never heard her name," she answered. I found courage to lift my eyes and look at her. "May I ask when you are going to be married?" Her eyes fell. The question did not seem to please her. "I do not know," she said. "We have not spoken of that yet. Everything is very vague." "Colonel Ray is coming down here, of course?" I remarked. "Not to my knowledge," she declared. "Not at any rate until the next meeting of the Council. I shall be back in town before then." "I begin to believe," I said, with a grim smile, "that your brother was right." "My brother right?" "He finds you enigmatic! You become engaged to a man one day, and you leave him the next--without apparent reason." She was obviously disturbed. A slight wave of trouble passed over her face. Her eyes failed to meet mine. "That I cannot altogether explain to you," she said. "There are reasons why I should come, but apart from them this place is very dear to me. I think that whenever anything has happened to me I have wanted to be here. You are a man, and you will not altogether understand this." "Why not?" I protested. "We, too, have our sentiment, the sentiment of places as well as of people. If I could choose where to die I think that it would be here, with my windows wide open and the roar of the incoming tide in my ears." "For a young man," she remarked, looking across at me, "I should consider you rather a morbid person." "There are times," I answered, "when I feel inclined to agree with you. To-night is one of them." "That," she said coolly, "is unfortunate. You have been over-working." "I am worried by a problem," I told her. "Tell me, are you a great believer in the sanctity of human life?" "What a question!" she murmured. "My own life, at any rate, seems to me to be a terribly important thing." "Suppose you had a friend," I said, "who was one night attacked in a quiet spot by a man who sought his life, say, for the purpose of robbery. Your friend was the stronger and easily defended himself. Then he saw that his antagonist was a man of ill repute, an evildoer, a man whose presence upon the earth did good to no one. So he took him by the throat and deliberately crushed the life out of him. Was your friend a murderer?"