Chance saved him the trouble. Some one was playing in the music-room and he recognized her touch and turned aside to stand under the looped portieres. She was alone, and again, as many times before, it came on him with the sense of discovery that she was radiantly beautiful--that for him she had no peer among women. It was the score of a Bach fugue that stood on the music-rack, and she was oblivious to everything else until her fingers had found and struck the final chords. Then she looked up and saw him. There was no greeting, no welcoming light in the slate-blue eyes; and she did not seem to see when he came nearer and offered to shake hands. "I've been talking to your grandfather for an hour or more," he began, "and I was just going to send my card after you. Haven't you a word of welcome for me, Ardea?" Her eyes were holding him at arm's length. "Do you think you deserve a welcome from any self-respecting woman?" she asked in low tones. His smile became a scowl--the anger scowl of the Gordons. "Why shouldn't I?" he demanded. "What have I done to make every woman I meet look at me as if I were a leper?" She rose from the piano-stool and confronted him bravely. It was now or never, if their future attitude each to the other was to be succinctly defined. "You know very well what you have done," she said evenly. "If you had a spark of manhood left in you, you would know what a dastardly thing you are doing now in coming here to see me." "Well, I don't," he returned doggedly. "And another thing: I'm not to be put off with hard words. I ask you again what has happened? Who has been lying about me this time?" Three other guests of the hotel were entering the music-room and the quarrel had to pause. Ardea had a nerve-shaking conviction that it would never do to leave it in the air. He must be made to understand, once for all, that he had sinned beyond forgiveness. She caught up the light wrap she had been wearing earlier in the evening and turned to one of the windows opening on the rear veranda. "Come with me," she whispered; and he followed obediently. But there was no privacy to be had out of doors. There was a goodly scattering of people in the veranda chairs enjoying the perfect night and the white moonlight. Ardea stopped suddenly. "You were intending to walk down to the valley?" she asked. He nodded. "I will walk with you to the cliff edge." It was a short hundred yards, and there were many abroad in the graveled walks: lovers in pairs, and groups of young people pensive or chattering. So it was not until they stood on the very battlements of the western cliff that they were measurably alone. "Has no one told you what happened last March--on the day of the ice storm?" she asked coldly. "No." "Don't you know it without being told?" "Of course, I don't; why should I?" His angry impassiveness shook her resolution. It seemed incredible that the most accomplished dissembler could rise to such supreme heights of seeming.