The clear December twilight was at hand and a new moon trembled in the heavens as Sir Percy, instead of going indoors, started for his invariable walk before dinner. He made straight towards the west and soon found himself on a wide avenue recently laid out, with young trees in boxes on each side. A quarter of a mile away from the houses it soon ran into the open fields, with clumps of trees and little valleys on either hand. Nothing quieter, more remote or deserted could be imagined, and yet Sir Percy was but fifteen minutes from his own door. Not a person was in sight, until, after a time, he saw, at some distance ahead, and rapidly approaching, the slight figure of a woman muffled in furs and walking rapidly. Something in the grace of her movements attracted Sir Percy as she came nearer. She held up her muff to her face in an attitude which reminded Sir Percy of Vigée le Brun’s picture in the Louvre, "The Lady with the Muff." As the girl flashed past him in the grey twilight he recognised Lucy Armytage. A strange and almost uncontrollable desire suddenly rose within him to join her, but, with the hereditary caution of an Englishman, he turned his head the other way. The next moment Lucy faced around, and, coming up to him, cried breathlessly: "How glad I am to meet you here! Pray walk with me as far as the car." There was no help for it, and Sir Percy, with the feeling of delight which follows when a man is forced to do what he wishes to do, replied: "With the utmost pleasure. Is it not rather late for you to be in so lonely a place?" "Decidedly so. Our reception closed at five o’clock, just when other people’s are beginning, and a friend asked me to drive out in this direction for a little air. She left me on a lighted street, but I wanted to feel the earth under my feet so I walked around this way. I didn’t realise how late it was until a few minutes ago, and I was scurrying home half frightened to death." As she said this, Sir Percy would have liked to open his arms wide and hold her to his breast like a timid bird, but Lucy dispelled this idea by saying: "Afraid of my uncle, I mean. He makes such a terrible row when I am out late. I am not in the least afraid of anything else." Her timidity had seemed charming, but her girlish courage was more charming still. Sir Percy’s head was in a whirl. No woman had ever impressed him so quickly and so deeply as this black-eyed girl, and he was staggered at the intensity of his own pleasure in being with her. Meanwhile Lucy thought him the most impassive of men, and felt a curious feminine desire to disturb that cool placidity which was so like a lake covered with a thin skin of ice.