She was frightened, shaken. He had given her the thrill, which, in her early relations with him she had half contemptuously deemed impossible. She found herself free from sense of outrage. She bore him no resentment. Indeed she had responded to his kiss. She was not quite sure, within herself, whether she would not respond again. The communicated thrill completed her original conception of him as the very perfect gentle knight. For after all, knights without red-blood in their veins might be gentle, but scarcely perfect. If she were free, she would marry him out of hand, without further question. He had always dwelt in a tender spot of her heart. Now he had slipped into one more warm, smouldering with strange fires. But she was not free. She stood at once at the parting of the roads. She must go back to a wandering or lonely life, or she must defy conventions. She went out into the ivy-walled garden, and walked up the central path, between the beds of wallflowers and forget-me-nots and the standard roses just bursting into leaf. What could she do? Once she had laughed scornfully at the idea of love playing any part in her life. She had not reckoned with her youth. And now she stared aghast at the vista of lonely and loveless years. Presently Blaise Olifant came from his study and advanced to meet her. He said: “Can you speak to me now?” “Yes—now,” she answered. “I’ve behaved like any blackguard. You must forgive me, if you can. The Italian cad who made me see red was not very much worse than myself.” There was a smile in her dark eyes as she looked up at him. “There’s all the difference in the world. I disliked the Italian very much.” She touched his sleeve. “You are forgiven, my dear friend. It’s all my fault. I oughtn’t to have come back.” “You’re the most wonderful of women,” said he. The most wonderful of women made a little wry movement of her lips. “It’s all a might-be and a can’t-be,” she said in a low voice. “Do you suppose, my dear, I don’t know that? If it could be, do you think I should regret losing my self-control?” She said. “If it’s any consolation to you—perhaps I lost mine too. We’re both human. Perhaps a woman is even more so than a man. That’s why I went away in October—things were getting impossible——” “Good God!” he exclaimed, “I thought you were bored to death!” A little laugh could not be restrained. The blindness of man to psychological phenomena is ever a subject for woman’s sweet or bitter mirth. But it was not in his heart to respond. “Then you do care for me a little?” “I shouldn’t be standing here with you now, if I didn’t. I shouldn’t have made the mistake of coming back, if I hadn’t wanted to see you.” “Mistake?” He sighed and turned a step away. “Yes. I suppose it was. I should have been frank with Mary and shewn her that it was impossible—for me.” “It would be best for me to go to-morrow,” said Olivia. “Where?”