Half reluctantly, yet unable to do otherwise, Ann laid her hand in the one he held out to her. His strong fingers closed round it possessively and she was aware of a queer, breathless feeling of captivity. She drew her hand sharply away. "Is it a 'kind deed'?" she asked lightly, for the sake of saying something--anything--which should break the tension of the silence which had followed. "Is it not? To bestow a charming half-hour of your companionship on the loneliest person in Montricheux? Oh, I think so." "You didn't look at all lonely this afternoon," flashed back Ann, remembering the pretty woman with whom she had seen him driving. "At the Battle of Flowers, you mean? No." He turned the conversation adroitly. "But I only won third prize, so I'm still in need of sympathy. Taking the third prize is rather my _métier_ in life." "Perhaps it's all you deserve," she suggested unkindly. "Anyway, you've nothing to grumble at. _We_ didn't win anything. We weren't elaborately enough decorated to compete." "Yet you looked as if you were enjoying it all," he hazarded. "Did you?" "Yes, of course I did. Didn't you?" "Not particularly--till some one threw me a rose." Ann decided to ignore the latter part of this speech. "You're such a confirmed cynic that I wonder you condescended to take part in anything go frivolous as the fête," she observed. He shrugged his shoulders. "When in Rome--Besides, it reminded me of my young days." "You talk as if you were a close relation of Methuselah. You're not so very old." "Am I not?" He paused a moment. "Old enough, at any rate, to have lost all my illusions." There was an undercurrent so bitter in the curtly uttered speech that Ann's warm young sympathies responded involuntarily. "I wish I could bring them back for you," she said impulsively. Through the flickering luminance of the lights rimming the boat's gunwale he looked at her with an odd intensity. "That's just what I'm afraid of," he said. "That you might bring them back. Fortunately, I'm leaving Montricheux to-morrow." Ann was silent. She was vibrantly conscious of the man's strange, forceful personality. His brusque, hard speeches fell on her like so many blows, and yet behind them she felt as though there were something that appealed--something hurt and seeking to hide its hurt behind an armour of savage irony. His voice, coolly indifferent once more, broke across her thoughts. "Would you like to go back now?" He spoke as though he were suddenly anxious to be rid of her as quickly as possible, and she assented hastily. His abrupt changes of mood disconcerted her. There seemed no accounting for what he might say next. He tossed a curt order to a man whom she could discern crouching forward near the engine. "_Bien, m'sieu_," came the answer, and presently the motor-boat was dexterously edging her way through the throng till she emerged into a clear space and purred briskly towards the shore.