"She is quite harmless," Juliette explained, gaily, to Barebone, on the first occasion when they were alone together. This did not present itself until Loo had been quartered in the Italian house for some days, with his own servant. Although he took luncheon and dinner with the family in the old building near to the gate-house, and spent his evenings in Juliette's drawing-room, the Marquis or Madame Maugiron was always present, and as often as not, they played a game of chess together. "She is quite harmless," said Juliette, tying, with a thread, the primroses she had been picking in that shady corner of the garden which lay at the other side of the Italian house. The windows of Barebone's apartment, by the way, looked down upon this garden, and he, having perceived her, had not wasted time in joining her in the morning sunshine. "I wonder if I shall be as harmless when I am her age." And, indeed, danger lurked beneath her lashes as she glanced at him, asking this question with her lips and a hundred others with her eyes, with her gay air of youth and happiness--with her very attitude of coquetry, as she stood in the spring sunshine, with the scent of the primroses about her. "I think that any one who approaches you will always do so at his peril, Mademoiselle." "Then why do it?" she asked, drawing back and busying herself with the flowers, which she laid against her breast, as if to judge the effect of their colour against the delicate white of her dress. "Why run into danger? Why come downstairs at all?" "Why breathe?" he retorted, with a laugh. "Why eat, or drink, or sleep? Why live? _Mon Dieu!_ because there is no choice. And when I see you in the garden, there is no choice for me, Mademoiselle. I must come down and run into danger, because I cannot help it any more than I can help--" "But you need not stay," she interrupted, cleverly. "A brave man may always retire from danger into safety." "But he may not always want to, Mademoiselle." "Ah!" And, with a shrug of the shoulders, she inserted the primroses within a very small waistband and turned away. "Will you give me those primroses, Mademoiselle?" asked Loo, without moving; for, although she had turned to go, she had not gone. She turned on her heel and looked at him, with demure surprise, and then bent her head to look at the flowers at her own waist. "They are mine," she answered, standing in that pretty attitude, her hair half concealing her face. "I picked them myself." "Two reasons why I want them." "Ah! but," she said, with a suggestion of thoughtfulness, "one does not always get what one wants. You ask a great deal, Monsieur." "There is no limit to what I would ask, Mademoiselle." She laughed gaily. "If--" she inquired, with raised eyebrows. "If I dared." Again she looked at him with that little air of surprise. "But I thought you were so brave?" she said. "So reckless of danger? A brave man assuredly does not ask. He takes that which he would have."