At that hour the brilliant merry little street would be filling, between its walls of blazing windows, across the breadth of its asphalte road, with a stream of men and women; men of fine carriage and women with splendid eyes; laughing, chattering, flaunting, flirting, strolling idly to and fro. He would sit there again, as he had sat so often, to sip his coffee and watch the crowd. On his way a postman, running into him, gave a fresh jolt to his memory. There would be a letter awaiting him from Lettice! He paused a moment, mentally to locate the post-office, and to taste the curious sedate pleasure the anticipation brought. It was the first letter he had received from her, and the first of such a kind that had ever come to him from any woman. He found it in the big busy building behind the Laktanya, and, slipping it into his pocket, turned back to the gay Váczi-utcza, already filled with a piercing ineffectual whiteness under the clear rose and amethyst of the evening sky. There, with a green tumbler before him, in a kavehaz much patronized of the garrison, he sat and read his letter, looking out absently between its sentences at the lighted faces in the street. It was a shy sweet formal little note, not lavish of endearment, less so even than her lips had been, and with something evasive and unaccustomed about it which touched Caragh, like the shrinking of a child's hand from an unfamiliar texture. He had completely forgotten her existence half an hour earlier, yet he was surprised to find how tenderly he thought of her, when he thought of her at all. Women, before now, had often filled his thoughts to an aching tension; he had read their letters with a leaping pulse; but he had felt for none of them as he did for this frank girl, who escaped so easily from his remembrance and had never warmed his blood. He bought a basket of saffron roses on his way back and sent it up to Ethel Vernon. She was sitting at table when he came down to dinner, talking volubly across it to a ruddy white-haired old gentleman with a soldier's face and shoulders. She greeted him with charming animation, introduced him to Kapitany, mentioned his adventure, and wove his tongue at once into their talk. Fine manners and the tact of entertainment were traditions in her family since there had been an earldom of Dalguise, and the famous Hungarian, noting the adroitness with which she piloted Caragh's ethical opinions into the traffic of politics, thought her a very clever woman, and him a very fortunate young man. With his own good fortune Caragh was less impressed. He had not expected that his roses would be worn, but he wished that a frock had not been selected which seemed so much to miss them.