"What can one do with that sort of woman! More than twenty years have passed since then, and I suppose I've collected an odd bit of sense here and there, as one does--but in such a circumstance I should be as helpless now as I was then. It would have been easy enough to give up the chase if she had shown a real distaste, physical, mental, any way, for me, but she didn't--there she was, quiescent in my arms, and I, for the first and last time in my life, was as unrestrained as a Dago.... And it was just at that moment, worst moment of all, that we heard steps on the gravel path by which we had come. We heard the steady, crunching sound, and pulled quickly apart, staring at each other. They were coming nearer, there could only be one goal for them, the end of the path--at the open door! Only a few seconds divided those steady steps from us, there was nothing to be done. Consuelo was feverishly trying to tidy her hair. It was impossible to do the one obvious thing, to get up and close the door and hope that the intruder would turn at the end of the path--impossible because the door was unhinged and useless, and because, we knew, the intruder could only be Tristram Carew, for whom a closed door would mean certain proof.... "We waited breathlessly. For the first time, I noticed my crumpled, burnt out cigar, and I was going to throw it on the floor when I remembered just in time that the sight of its ruffled, unsmoked state would give the show away. Just beside me was a little window, its glass long since smashed out. The steps were perhaps five yards away now, and I blessed the winding path which hid us from him until he was actually at the very door.... "Consuelo suddenly whispered fiercely, 'We must talk, you fool,' and began talking about something as loudly and as casually as she could. And then, and then, as I lifted my arm to throw my cigar out of the window into the shrubbery, a hand came in from outside, from below, just a hand, and very, very carefully, for between the fingers of that hand was a cigar with a long ash. I didn't think, I hadn't time to be surprised at the amazing fact of it; threw my cigar away and gently took the cigar from the fingers. I knew what it meant--that long undisturbed ash! My God, how gentle I was with it, my whole soul went out into the care with which I brought it towards me! I didn't even see the mysterious hand disappear, I hadn't time to think of it.... "Consuelo hadn't stopped talking during that second or so, for the incident was only a matter of that. We were about two feet apart on the bench. I held my cigar as prominently as I could, just above my knee, and prayed that the ash wouldn't drop for just another fraction of a second--and I passed a box of matches to Consuelo, whispering her to strike one. Tristram was just at the last turn of the path to the door, in one more step he would be facing us. "'Hallo!' I interrupted Consuelo's flow of gibberish. 'I wonder who that is!'