Laila did not need more. Already, under cover of the shadow, she had dexterously slipped off her silver jingles, lest they should betray what really seemed to her her worst, nay! her only offence;--the taking and wearing of Roshan Khân's present. And now, wrapping her veil about her like a cloak, gathering her trailing skirts to orthodox length with an appalling presence of mind, she was off with just the little uneasy laugh which might well befit the situation. She left her companion bewildered, yet still facing the old man recklessly. Since he could not explain, he did not mean to be hectored. Yet, once again, the old voice took him unawares. "Memory plays strange tricks with us at times," it said slowly, but with a suggestion of the fateful, hopeless rhythm of a Greek chorus in it. "She has taken me back, this evening, nearly sixty long years. The river before us is the yellow flood of the Tiber, the woman who has just left us is the woman I loved--sixty long years ago--I had kissed her, as you have kissed her. I had told her I loved her, as you have just told her--and then, like an echo from the river below where a boat was moored, came to our ears, the same words, 'I love you.'--They were spoken, Captain Dering, by a boy, barely in his teens, to a waiting-maid. The boy was her son. She had been married, as they marry them in Italy, almost before her girlhood, and I, the boy's tutor, was nearer her age than his father--a better man, too, Captain Dering! But those words--'I love you'--parted us once, and for all. They mirrored the truth for us--the truth of the love which hides in balconies--in pleasure boats--" he took a step forward, and his whole presence changed. He raised his hand, priest to its finger tips. "Let it mirror the truth to you also, my son--leave this poor lady to her duty, as I--" Vincent Dering broke in on him haughtily, his pride in arms, impatience at the falseness of his position making him discourteous. "You don't understand; you are absolutely mistaken--I refuse to explain, but I really must ask you not to interfere." The old man's whole bearing changed again. He drew himself up, and, foils in hand, bowed, as fencers do at the salute. "Were I the lady's husband, sir, I would _make_ you answer. As a priest of God, I must warn you that I will speak, if--" Vincent Dering interrupted him again. "I can't prevent that--but you will wrong us--her at any rate--the best, the kindest woman--" He paused, for Father Ninian had come close, laid a hand on his, and the touch seemed to bring silence. "It is sixty long years, Captain Dering," he said, and his eyes seemed to pierce through the darkness, "since I have laid my hand on my fellow-men save in the hope of healing. It was a fancy of mine after--after we kissed, and parted. But I touch you as a second self, a fellow-sinner; for she too was the best--the kindest--" His old voice failed.