Piers could not speak. "Look!" said Irene, in a whisper, pointing. A great dragon-fly, a flash of blue, had dropped on to the surface of the pool, and lay floating. As they watched it rose, to drop again upon a small stone amid a shallow current; half in, half out of, the sunny water, it basked. "Oh, how lovely everything is!" exclaimed Irene, in a voice that quivered low. "How perfect a day!" "It was weather like this when I first saw you," said Piers. "Earlier, but just as bright. My memory of you has always lived in sunshine. I saw you first from my window; you were standing in the garden at Ewell; I heard your voice. Do you remember telling the story of Thibaut Rossignol?" "Oh yes, yes!" "Is he still with your father?" "Thibaut? Why, Thibaut is an institution. I can't imagine our house without him. Do you know that he always calls me Mademoiselle Irene?" "Your name is beautiful in any language. I wonder how many times I have repeated it to myself? And thought, too, so often of its meaning; longed, for _that_--and how vainly!" "Say the name--now," she faltered. "Irene!--Irene!" "Why, you make music of it! I never knew how musical it sounded. Hush! look at that thing of light and air!" The dragon-fly had flashed past them. This way and that it darted above the shining water, then dropped once more, to float, to sail idly with its gossamer wings. Piers stole nearer. He sat on a stone by her side. "Irene!" "Yes. I like the name when you say it." "May I touch your hand?" Still gazing at the dragon-fly, as if careless of what she did, she held her hand to him. Piers folded it in both his own. "May I hold it as long as I live?" "Is that a new thought of yours?" she asked, in a voice that shook as it tried to suggest laughter in her mind. "The newest! The most daring and the most glorious I ever had." "Why, then I have been mistaken," she said softly, for an instant meeting his eyes. "I fancied I owed you something for a wrong I did, without meaning it, more than eight years gone by." "That thought had come to you?" Piers exclaimed, with eyes gleaming. "Indeed it had. I shall be more than half sorry if I have to lose it." "How foolish I was! What wild, monstrous folly! How could you have dreamt for a moment that such a one as I was could dare to love you?--Irene, you did me no wrong. You gave me the ideal of my life--something I should never lose from my heart and mind--something to live towards! Not a hope; hope would have been madness. I have loved you without hope; loved you because I had found the only one I could love--the one I must love--on and on to the end." She laid her free hand upon his that clasped the other, and bowed him to her reasoning mood. "Let me speak of other things--that have to be made plain between you and me. First of all, a piece of news. I have just heard that my brother is going to marry Mrs. John Jacks."