"I should like to leave this spot," said Lilly. "If we were to be seen here!" "Oh, here of all places we may be seen together," he rejoined, laughing with childlike glee. "It would take a perverse imagination to assume that we selected this very house for a secret rendezvous. But as you wish." He offered her his arm. She declined. They walked side by side through dark, tortuous streets on the farther west side. He talked to her steadily. One idea suggested another. One wheel of fire set free another. Sometimes it appeared to Lilly he had totally forgotten her presence and was speaking for his own delight in the play of his fancy. What he said seemed to have no bearing upon herself and her sorry existence. But no, she was mistaken. His gold had been coined for her after all. He merely gave too much, and her brain lacked space to receive all of it. He walked with an elastic, somewhat tripping tread. His cane, stuck head downward in his coat pocket, tapped against his shoulder. His white silk necktie gleamed. She saw nothing else of him. And he talked, talked. Sometimes she felt that she was being boxed on the ear, and anon that she was being stroked tenderly. When he made mock of Richard and Richard's friends, she wanted to contradict him, but he never mentioned names. Besides she had always thought the same, it seemed to her. He alluded cautiously to her aristocratic past, chose pictures from country life, extolled discreet horseback rides _à deux_, and the transports awakened by reddish, golden dawns. Lilly felt he had been present at all the events of her life. "I have lived a good deal in castles," he added by way of explanation. "I know it all." Oh, if his past had been similar! So he drilled ever deeper into her soul. When he began to speak of the books he had brought her--he considerately ignored her having denied herself the time he had called--she ventured a languid resistance. "Please don't lend me anything of the sort again," she entreated. "Why not?" "The books confuse and sicken me--I don't know. You said they would lead me to myself. On the contrary. It seemed to me everything was growing strange which I had once looked upon as right and sacred.