a lady--a
beautiful lady--very particularly beautiful, as though she had been
stolen out of Mahomet's paradise. With Dona Rita it can't be anything as
definite as that. But speaking of her in the same strain, I've always
felt that she looked as though Allegre had caught her in the precincts of
some temple . . . in the mountains."

I was delighted. I had never heard before a woman spoken about in that
way, a real live woman that is, not a woman in a book. For this was no
poetry and yet it seemed to put her in the category of visions. And I
would have lost myself in it if Mr. Blunt had not, most unexpectedly,
addressed himself to me.

"I told you that man was as fine as a needle."

And then to Mills: "Out of a temple? We know what that means." His dark
eyes flashed: "And must it be really in the mountains?" he added.

"Or in a desert," conceded Mills, "if you prefer that. There have been
temples in deserts, you know."

Blunt had calmed down suddenly and assumed a nonchalant pose.

"As a matter of fact, Henry Allegre caught her very early one morning in
his own old garden full of thrushes and other small birds. She was
sitting on a stone, a fragment of some old balustrade, with her feet in
the damp grass, and reading a tattered book of some kind. She had on a
short, black, two-penny frock (_une petite robe de deux sous_) and there
was a hole in one of her stockings. She raised her eyes and saw him
looking down at her thoughtfully over that ambrosian beard of his, like
Jove at a mortal. They exchanged a good long stare, for at first she was
too startled to move; and then he murmured, "_Restez donc_." She lowered
her eyes again on her book and after a while heard him walk away on the
path. Her heart thumped while she listened to the little birds filling
the air with their noise. She was not frightened. I am telling you this
positively because she has told me the tale herself. What better
authority can you have . . .?" Blunt paused.

"That's true. She's not the sort of person to lie about her own
sensations," murmured Mills above his clasped hands.

"Nothing can escape his penetration," Blunt remarked to me with that
equivocal urbanity which made me always feel uncomfortable on Mills'
account. "Positively nothing." He turned to Mills again. "After some
minutes of immobility--she told me--she arose from her stone and walked
slowly on the track of that apparition. Allegre was nowhere to be seen
b