They found much to talk about all that afternoon; but though Comethup listened to the captain and delighted the captain's heart by his close and clear descriptions of foreign places and foreign peoples, yet, if the truth must be told, he spoke and listened almost mechanically. Once or twice, while he talked, the very room in which he sat, and the quiet figure of the captain, seemed to vanish completely, and in their places was a dark and lonely garden, filled with the dead leaves of a year before, and seeming in its desolation the very haunt of every cheerless wind that blew nowhere else, and in the garden the figure of a child. Heaven knows through how many places he had carried that remembrance, in how many hours he had seen himself, a little child again, creeping tremblingly into the garden in search for the ghost. The later remembrance of the girl, as he had seen her when he left school, seemed to have vanished; it was, in any case, far more hazy when he tried to think of it than that earlier vision. Coming back after his wanderings to the old town had only made the recollection a stronger one. All the intervening years seemed to be swept aside, and his heart was melted with pity for the lonely child. Yet, strangely enough, the knowledge--forced upon him in spite of his dreams--that she was a woman made him hesitate to speak of her to the captain; still less to go and see her, as he might have done years before. So he let the afternoon wear away, and the dusk of evening was creeping over the town before he finally announced, with what carelessness he could summon, that he thought he would take a walk. The captain must have looked a little below the carelessness, for, with a fine tact, for which he can not be sufficiently praised, he suggested that he felt tired, and would sit by the window and smoke. Coming to the entrance of the old garden, Comethup noticed that nothing seemed changed. The gate, which had long ago fallen, was hidden a little more deeply in the grasses and weeds, but for the rest it might have been an enchanted castle, over which a spell had been thrown and upon which the sunlight must never shine. Even on that warm summer evening the place struck a chill upon him as he picked his way across the fallen gate and went up the avenue. But here at last, as he reached the house, there was a change. Lights gleamed from a window which he always remembered to have seen shuttered; and presently, as he stood, scarcely knowing whether to go up to the house or indeed what to do, one of the long windows which opened on to a narrow balcony was pushed open and a figure came through and stood, clearly outlined against the light behind, above him. He knew in a moment that it must be 'Linda, although her face was in shadow. He made a half-movement toward her, and she started forward and came to the edge of the balcony and leaned over. "Who's down there?" she called in a voice scarcely above a whisper.