“I’m not surprised. Brookins was wondering how he could explain to the Warden not knowing a charming young lady, who had a pet name for him. They’re asking him about it now at the high-table, and he’s lying fit to shame the devil. His pillow will be drenched to-night with tears of penitence. You rehearsed the Judgment Day to him. You’ve turned the tables on him, because, you know, that’s his profession every Sunday.” I helped her to step across the sill of my window. She gazed round my room, taking in the pipes and tobacco-ash and clothes strewn about. “I love it,” she said. “It’s so cosy and mannish.” She perched herself on the arm of a chair, so that the golden, after-glow fell athwart her. I watched her, thinking how little she had changed from the old Fiesole. She was still tantalizing, as mischievous as a school-girl; once she had fiddled with boys’ heartstrings, now she took her pastime in breaking men’s. She was a creature of vivid mysteries, alternately wooing and repelling. She could beckon you on with passionate white arms and thrust you from her with hands of ice. She came out of nowhere like a wild thing from a wood. You looked up and saw her--she vanished. She courted capture and invited pursuit; but you knew that, though you caught her, you would never tame her. She had plucked a deep-cupped daffodil from a vase on the table. She was bending over it with a tender air of contemplation. She held the long slim stalk low down in her dainty, long, slim fingers. The golden dust of the petals seemed the reflection of the golden glint that was in her hair. The stalk was the color of her eyes. Her tempestuous loveliness--made to lure and torture men, to fill them with cravings which she could not satisfy--was resting now. She looked up at me with calculated suddenness. She read admiration in my eyes. “You find me pretty nice, don’t you, Dante?” “I’m not disguising it, am I?” “I thought, maybe, you were cross with me about Brookins. We never quite approved of one another, did we, Dante? You thought and still think me a coquette.” “Well, aren’t you?” “With some people, but not with you. I only played with the Bantam to draw you out of your shell.” “Really?” “Really.” Then the absurdity of being serious over an affair of childhood struck us and we went off into gales of laughter. “Let’s be sensible,” I said. “What are you doing? Staying at Oxford with friends?” “No. I’m traveling alone with my maid.” “Have you any engagement for this evening?” “No.” “Then why shouldn’t we spend it together?” “No reason in the world.” “Where’ll we spend it?” “Here, if you like.” “But we can’t spend it here, just you and I. The college doesn’t allow it. Besides, you haven’t had dinner. Where’ll we dine?” “Anywhere.” “What do you say to punting down to Sandford and dinner at the inn there?” “I’m game.”