The eyelashes lifted themselves and made round her eyes the big soft shadow of which Sara Studleigh had spoken. A strong and healthy valvular organ in his breast lifted itself curiously at the same time. “To apologize?” Was he speaking to her almost as if she were still four or five? It was to the helplessness of those years he was about to explain—and yet he did not feel as though he were still eight. “I want to tell you why I never came back to the garden. It was a broken promise, wasn’t it?” The music had not ceased, but they stopped dancing. “Will you come?” he said and she went with him like a child—just as she had followed in her babyhood. It seemed only natural to do what he asked. The conservatory was like an inner Paradise now. The tropically scented warmth—the tiers on tiers of bloom above bloom—the softened swing of music—the splash of the fountain on water and leaves. Their plane had lifted itself too. They could hear the splashing water and sometimes feel it in the corner seat of marble he took her to. A crystal drop fell on her hand when she sat down. The blue of his eyes was vaguely troubled and he spoke as if he were not certain of himself. “I was wakened up in what seemed to me the middle of the night,” he said, as if indeed the thing had happened only the day before. “My mother was obliged to go back suddenly to Scotland. I was only a little chap, but it nearly finished me. Parents and guardians don’t understand how gigantic such a thing can be. I had promised you—we had promised each other—hadn’t we?” “Yes,” said Robin. Her eyes were fixed upon his face—open and unmoving. Such eyes! Such eyes! All the touchingness of the past was in their waiting on his words. “Children—little boys especially—are taught that they must not cry out when they are hurt. As I sat in the train through the journey that day I thought my heart would burst in my small breast. I turned my back and stared out of the window for fear my mother would see my face. I’d always loved her. Do you know I think that just then I _hated_ her. I had never hated anything before. Good Lord! What a thing for a little chap to go through! My mother was an angel, but she didn’t _know_.” “No,” said Robin in a small strange voice and without moving her gaze. “She didn’t _know_.” He had seated himself on a sort of low marble stool near her and he held a knee with clasped hands. They were hands which held each other for the moment with a sort of emotional clinch. His position made him look upward at her instead of down. “It was _you_ I was wild about,” he said. “You see it was _you_. I could have stood it for myself. The trouble was that I felt I was such a big little chap. I thought I was years—ages older than you—and mountains bigger,” his faint laugh was touched with pity for the smallness of the big little chap. “You seemed so tiny and pretty—and lonely.” “I was as lonely as a new-born bird fallen out of its nest.”