The rising shades had drowned the sun. A silence came on the garden, so utter that Lalette felt she could hear her own heart beat, and Demadé Slair’s beside her. The trees stood straight; the ruins of the flowers did not stir. In that enchanted stillness she seemed to float without power of motion. He leaned toward her, his arm close against her back, his other hand crept over her two. “Demoiselle—Lalette,” he said in a voice so low it did not break the quiet. “I love you. Come away with me.” Her down-bent head shook slowly; tears gathered behind the almost-closed eyes. The arm around her back slid slowly beneath her own arm, the hand groped to close slowly around one soft breast; as though it were by no volition of her own, her head came back to meet the kiss. The tears ran down her cheek to touch his; he drew from her and began to speak rapidly in a voice low and urgent: “Come with me. I will take you away from every unhappiness. We can go beyond finding. I am a fighting man, can find a need for my service anywhere. It does not matter; we can forget all this entanglement and make our own world. I have money enough. We can go to the Green Islands, and you will never have to use the Art again. Oh, Lalette, I would even take you to the court and join your mother. Do you wish it?” Her lips barely moving, she said; “And Rodvard?” He kissed her again. “Bergelin? You owe him nothing. What has he done for you? And now he will tell Mathurin about the heiress of Tuolén, and there will be no more place for you—except with me. I will always have a place for you, Lalette, now or a thousand years from now. Or do you fear him? I am the better man.” Now her eyes opened wide on the first star, low in the darkening sky, and with one hand she gently disengaged his clasp from her breast. “No,” she said in a voice clearer than before. “No, Demadé, I cannot. Perhaps for that reason, but I cannot. We had better go in now.” III “Friend Ber-ge-lin! Friend Ber-ge-lin!” The voice from below-stairs brought back to a consciousness of unhappiness the mind that had lost itself in the sweet cadences and imagined worlds of Momoroso. Rodvard sprang up and threw open the door. “What will you have?” “Someone to see you.” Down the hall another door closed. It would be the little old man who asked so many questions and went almost a-tiptoe, as though always prepared to look through a keyhole. From the stairhead, Rodvard could see in the evening’s first shades a figure covered with a long cloak, somehow familiar, but the face hooded over. “Beg her to come up,” he called. The figure mounted with one hand on the bannister, in the slow manner of the old. Near the last step his mind clicked; he was not surprised when in the room the hood fell back to show Mme. Kaja. Face cold as ice, he remained standing. She came across the room in a whirl of skirts, with both hands out. “My de-ear boy,” she said.