And Percival laughed brightly again. Happy, happy to be with her--alone, alone at this hour, in this still place! "Old Rollo!" he laughed. "Well, anyway, if I failed him, I've seen you." She asked him. "But why have you come--so late?" and at that his laughter left him. "I wanted to see you," he said. "I don't know why," and paused. He did not know; but in declaring it to her, and in that pause, came a step nearer discovery. Some nameless reason held his speech, and, while she waited, fluttered in his eyes and communicated its influence to her also. In that pause suspicion came to both of some strange element that trembled in the air--fugitive, remote, but causing its presence to be known as a scent declares itself upon the breeze. She saw a tinge of redness kindle in his face. He saw the faintest trace of deepening colour in the shades upon her cheeks. Not yet, not yet the truth! Transient the spell and quickly gone. Only, a little shaken by it, "You're going away soon, Dora," he said. "I think that's why I came." Free of it: "But that's not a reason," she answered him lightly. "I am not going so suddenly--not till the end of the week." "Saturday--it's the day after to-morrow." "Ah, well, time goes so slowly here." "Dull for you--I can imagine that. To this French school, are you going, Dora? I heard you telling Lady Burdon of it." "It's not a school. No more school for me, and I am very thankful." "Tell me what you do there." She went into a sudden break of laughter. She had somewhere picked up a single vulgar phrase that consorted most strangely with her precise manner of speech. "Your coming here like this," she laughed, "and asking such very funny things!"--then used her phrase--"it tickles me to death." The piquancy of it delighted him, and he laughed delightedly, and for some reason had a stronger sense of her rare beauty. Not yet, not yet the truth, but nearer yet, even as such truth advances by the strangest and most secret steps. "Tell me, though, Dora!" "Oh, how it can interest you I am puzzled to imagine! Pleasant enough things, then. There are twelve of us there, all English, I am glad to say. We never speak English, though--always French; and then there are German and Italian days; they make us laugh very much." As icicles broken in the hand! Her laughter had caused the shades on her cheek to glow. He gazed at her in sheerest admiration; felt a new stirring of his blood; felt his breath quicken. She was close, close to him. The little breezes that had attended her, and had gone as if asulk at his intrusion, came with a sudden little fury to win her back again, and smote him full with all the fragrance that she had, and tossed her scarf and tossed her skirt against him. She drew back her skirt, using the hand that held the pansies she had gathered. The action brushed his hand with hers and with her flowers.