Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileries above the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire to avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the Nouveau Luxe where, even at that supposedly “dead” season, people one knew were always drifting to and fro; and they sat on a bench in the pale sunlight, the discoloured leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share their solitude but a lame working-man and a haggard woman who were lunching together mournfully at the other end of the majestic vista. Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous and well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined, his smile as whimsical, as of old. He had been on cool though friendly terms with the pompous uncle and the poor sickly cousin whose joint disappearance had so abruptly transformed his future; and it was his way to understate his feelings rather than to pretend more than he felt. Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerned a change. The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in his brief sojourn among his people and among the great possessions so tragically acquired, old instincts had awakened, forgotten associations had spoken in him. Susy listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginative perception of the distance that these things had put between them. “It was horrible... seeing them both there together, laid out in that hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham... the poor boy especially. I suppose that’s really what’s cutting me up now,” he murmured, almost apologetically. “Oh, it’s more than that--more than you know,” she insisted; but he jerked back: “Now, my dear, don’t be edifying, please,” and fumbled for a cigarette in the pocket which was already beginning to bulge with his miscellaneous properties. “And now about you--for that’s what I came for,” he continued, turning to her with one of his sudden movements. “I couldn’t make head or tail of your letter.” She paused a moment to steady her voice. “Couldn’t you? I suppose you’d forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn’t--and he’s asked me to fulfil it.” Strefford stared. “What--that nonsense about your setting each other free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?” She signed “Yes.” “And he’s actually asked you--?” “Well: practically. He’s gone off with the Hickses. Before going he wrote me that we’d better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sent me a postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him.” Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. “But what the deuce led up to all this? It can’t have happened like that, out of a clear sky.”