Sooner or later they would meet. She had known that always, but had never dreamt of it being so soon, or so strangely. Somehow in life the meetings we expect never do take place as we expect them. We may rehearse our little scenes as carefully as we please, we may arrange our looks, our words, the very tones of our voices, but when the actual _rencontre_ does occur it is sure to be utterly different, and the carefully-arranged programme is never carried out. It is so with Lauraine now. She has sometimes longed, sometimes dreaded to meet him, but always imagined it at some distant time and in some totally different manner; and now Keith is sitting at her table, her own guest, smiling, talking, looking at her to all appearance as unconcerned and forgetful as if that "garden scene" had never been enacted. He is a better actor than herself, and he determines to be it. She shows that she is troubled, pained, perplexed. He ignores everything that might lead to that past, is careless, cynical, indifferent as of yore; but all the time his heart is beating with tumultuous pain; he is thinking how sadly altered she is, how changed from the bright, beautiful Lauraine of his boyhood, and yet dearer to him in her sufferings and sorrow than in any years that are past. It is hard work to keep down the thoughts that are thronging, the love that is leaping, the joy that is thrilling his every sense; but he knows it must be done, and he succeeds in doing it and in deceiving Lauraine. The cloth is removed. The soft dusk settles on the pretty quiet scene without. Lady Etwynde, who dislikes a glare of light, blows out nearly all the illumination of candles in the room, and they sit there by the window watching the stars come out one by one, talking less now, but with something grave and earnest in the talk that it has lacked before. At last Lady Etwynde rises, and, saying she has letters to write, moves away to a little inner room, partitioned off by curtains from the one where they have all been sitting. It is solitude, yet not solitude. The sense of being together, the knowledge that their low tones are unheard, is just restrained by the feeling that another person is close at hand. Keith is silent for some moments, then bends towards Lauraine. "You never answered my letters; I could hardly expect it. But I do hope you believe I felt for your grief?" "Yes," she answers, simply; "I always felt sure of that." "I am glad you say so. When you never wrote I thought you were offended, indifferent, perhaps. It has been a terribly blank time for me." "I think you have no right to tell me that," she says, flushing and paling with nervous agitation. "I cannot help you, and it only adds to the sufferings of my own life that yours is also sad."