To-night there came to her with amazing clearness the vision of a garden, ill-cared for, deserted, but oh! how beautiful, stretching behind a Savoy inn in the mountainous country about Pol les Thermes. There she and Downing, drawn--driven--to one another by a trembling, irresistible impulse, had kissed for the first time, and for a moment, then as now, she had lain in his arms, looking up at him with piteous, questioning eyes. How long ago that morning seemed, and yet how few had been the kisses in between! Suddenly she felt him loosen his grip of her shoulders; and he held her away from himself, at arms' length, as deliberately, in the tone of one who has a right to an answer, he asked her a certain question regarding herself and Melancthon Robinson. She was pained and startled, reluctant to tell that which she had always kept secret, and which she believed--so little are we aware that most things concerning us are known to all our world--had never been suspected. But she admitted his right to question her, and found time to whisper to her secret self, 'My answer must surely make him glad'; and so, her eyes lowering before his piercing, insistent gaze, she told him the truth. But, as he heard her, Downing relaxed his hold on her, and with something like a groan he said: 'Why did I not know this before? Why should I have had to wait till now to learn such a thing from you?' And as she, surprised and distressed, hesitated, not knowing what to say, he to her amazement turned away, and in a preoccupied tone, even with a smile, said suddenly: 'Go. Go now, my dear. It is too late for you to be down here. I have work to finish to-night.' Then he opened the door, and, with no further word or gesture of affection, shut her out in what seemed for the moment utter darkness. But as she slowly began groping her way up the steps, sick at heart, bewildered by the strangeness, by the coldness, of his manner, the door of the Beach Room again opened, and she heard him calling her back with a hoarse, eager cry. She hesitated, then turned to see his tall, lean figure filling up the doorway, and outlined for a moment against the bright lamplit room, before he strode across the sand to where she stood, trembling. Once more he took her in his arms, once more he murmured the words of broken, passionate endearment for which her heart had hungered, only, however, at last again to say, but no longer with a smile: 'Go. Go now, my beloved--for I am only a man after all--only a man as other men are.' Then for some days Penelope had found him again become strangely cold and alien. She had felt the situation between them intolerable, and suddenly she had suggested the sojourn at Kingpole Farm. And on the eve of his departure Downing again seemed to become instinct with the mysterious ardour he had shown from the first moment they had met, from the flash of time during which their eyes had exchanged their first long, intimate, probing look.