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figure of a girl, the pale, passionate face of a woman, to whom every
moment of life had its own special and individual meaning. Her eyes were
strangely bright. There was a tenseness about her manner, a restraint in
her tone, which seemed to speak of some emotional crisis. She passed out
into the quiet garden, in itself so exquisitely in accordance with this
sleeping land, and even Mannering was at once conscious of some alien
note in these old-world surroundings which had long ago soothed his
ruffled nerves into the luxury of repose.

"A wrap!" she murmured. "How absurd! Come and let us sit under the cedar
tree. Those young people seem to have wandered off, and I want to talk to
you."

"I am content to listen," he answered. "It is a night for listeners,
this!"

"I want to talk," she continued, "and yet--the words seem difficult.
These wonderful days! How quickly they seem to have passed."

"There are others to follow," he answered, smiling. "That is one of the
joys of life here. One can count on things!"

"Others for you!" she murmured. "You have pitched your tent. I came here
only as a wanderer."

"But scarcely a month ago," he exclaimed, "you too--"

"Don't!" she interrupted. "A month ago it seemed to me possible that
I might live here always. I felt myself growing young again. I believed
that I had severed all the ties which bound me to the days which have
gone before. I was wrong. It was the sort of folly which comes to one
sometimes, the sort of folly for which one pays."

His face was almost white in the moonlight. His deep-set grey eyes were
fixed upon her.

"You were content--a month ago," he said. "You have been in London for
two days, and you have come back a changed woman. Why must you think of
leaving this place? Why need you go at all?"

"My friend," she said, softly, "I think that you know why. It is very
beautiful here, and I have never been happier in all my life. But one may
not linger all one's days in the pleasant places. One sleeps through the
nights and is rested, but the days--ah, they are different."

"I cannot reason with you," he said. "You are too vague. Yet--you say
that you have been contented here."

"I have been happy," she murmured.

"Then you must speak more plainly," he insisted, a note of passion
throbbing in his hoarse tones. "I ask you again--why do you talk of going
back, like a city slave whose days of holiday are over? What is there in
the world more beautiful t