The spell was broken and the creature was a friend of Elsie’s. “Oh, well, as you are here you may as well stay,” she said with no attempt at graciousness. “But I must go in presently. I have business letters to write.” “Oh, please! Business letters! What a horrible thought. How could it enter your head in these woods? If they were mine I doubt if I should write a line except when they were dripping in winter: I have a holy horror of rheumatism.” He strolled beside her, his hands in the pockets of his riding-coat, his hat pushed to the back of his head. He had come to the wood deliberately to meet her, casually if possible, and find her off guard, and he had been rewarded by a full glimpse of something he had half suspected two nights ago. She had haunting memories for him and he was determined to study her, possibly to marry her. He smiled to himself as he reflected that the first thought of another man no doubt would be to awaken the womanhood so perversely sleeping in this girl who seemed to be unconscious that sex ruled the world, but he was on a different track. He had extracted something of her history from Elsie Brewster after Gita had left them, and more from Polly Pleyden, with whom he had dined on the following night. But the information had been sought less out of sheer masculine curiosity than as a means for determining his tactics. “May I smoke?” Gita nodded sullenly. She had behaved uncommonly well, she told herself, but if he were unable to take a hint nothing further could be expected of her. A man in her woods! Men, individually, were not worth hating as long as they behaved themselves, but her indifference when they did was entire. This creature did not look predatory and his cool impersonal gaze aroused in her no sense of wary disquiet. She walked straight and silent beside him and he talked of the dinner at the Pleydens’. “Polly was rather huffed when I told her I had met you at the Pelhams’,” he said. “It seems you have refused to dine with her.” “My grandmother has only been dead three months. Polly knows quite well I don’t go out. Dining with Elsie is another matter.” “Quite so. But I am delighted to hear that your period of mourning will end in the winter and you will visit the Pleydens in New York.” There was no emphasis in his cool quiet tones and he appeared merely to be making conversation. Gita wondered impatiently why he didn’t go. “I suppose I shall have to visit them for a week or two.” “Ah? Mrs. Pleyden said she expected you to spend the winter with them. It seems she had some understanding with your grandmother.” “Oh, no!” Gita’s voice sounded such genuine alarm that he glanced about the woods once more with a smile of sympathy. “I understand,” he said softly.