"I did. I was so frightfully ill the night before last, I thought I was dying. And you see, there is no doctor to be had." "Oh!" said Nadia, "I wish we had known!" His eyes roamed round the garden. "I had no idea there could be a place like this in this country," he said. "Nor--nor anyone so--anyone like you." "Like me?" cried Nadia, with animation, glowing upon him. "How do you mean--anyone so what?" "Anyone so perfectly beautiful." It was out before he knew it. He, Denzil, had said it--he, who never in his life previously had paid a compliment to a woman. In England he would no more have said such a thing than have taken his coat off and sat in his shirtsleeves in her presence. But here all was different. And she was not angry, but on the contrary, much pleased. She smiled slowly, mysteriously, with lowered lashes, and Denzil, leaning forward, took up her childishly small, delicately tended hand, and kissed it. "Forgive me," he said. "My heart is full. Your great kindness!" She raised her lids, very slowly, letting her night-deep eyes rest full upon him. The look dazzled him like strong sunshine. "Oh, you are just right," she said. "Just like the Englishmen in books. I have always wanted to meet one. And now--I have." There was a delicious silence between them. Nadia sat passive, the hand which he had kissed resting lightly upon her lap, just as he had laid it there. Her skin was warm and clear, with a glow of carmine in either cheek. From each tiny ear hung a drop-shaped pearl. She wore no color at all. The contrast of her beauty with her white dress and the softly looped masses of her night-black hair was exquisite. Stock doves cooed in the trees, and the summer breeze wandered by. The young man's eyes never left that astonishing little face, with its rosy, pouted child lips, and eyes almost too large for proportion. Then she asked a question. It slipped over the edge of her lip quite harmlessly, but it made him tingle all over. "Are you married?" He sat bolt upright. "No," he said. And at the moment he was more glad than words can say that this was so. "I suppose"--again the heavy fringes came down to veil the eyes--"I suppose there are many, many beautiful girls in England?" "I daresay," replied Denzil. "And yet you have not married any of them? Or--forgive me--perhaps you have been married, and have lost? ..." "Oh, no." He hastily reassured her. "The beauty of English girls is--is different," he said. "They are--they are--I don't know how to describe it. They run about, and get sunburnt, and hot, and untidy. Or they are very sensible, and read a great deal, and improve their minds. Very few of them are like a princess in a fairy tale." "Am I?" said Nadia, with a half-smile, eying him sidelong under her lids. "Like the Princess that was a witch too," said Denzil, dreamily.