ttle garden which Rose
Winter had said was like fairyland.

Mary did not wish to be questioned by anybody in the house, however; so
she went out at the usual hour, found her employe in the long queue of
those who waited before the Casino doors, paid him, and said that he
might keep the seat for himself. She then went to walk on the terrace,
hoping that no one she knew might be there: and it seemed likely that
she would have her wish, for most of her acquaintances were keen
gamblers who considered a morning wasted outside the Casino.

Mary walked to the eastern end of the terrace, where the _ascenseur_
comes up from the level of the railway station below. She remembered how
she had heard the little boy give his musical cry, and how she had
looked out of the train window, and his smile had decided her not to go
on. If she had gone on, how different everything would have been, how
much better perhaps; and yet--she could not be sorry to-day, as she was
sometimes in bitter moments, that she had come to Monte Carlo.

As she stood by the balustrade, looking away toward Italy, a voice she
knew spoke behind her. She turned, and saw Hannaford, his hat off, his
marred face pale in the sunshine.

"Oh," she said impulsively, "I think you're the one person I could
endure talking to just now!"

Since the night of the ball on the yacht, when they had sat on the
terrace in the moonlight, they had become good friends, she and
Hannaford. She had no feeling of repulsion for him now. That was lost in
pity, and forgotten in gratitude for the sympathy which made it possible
to confide in him as she could in no one else. He stood entirely apart
from other men, in her eyes, as he seemed to stand apart from life, and
out of the sun. When she spoke to him of her troubles or hopes it was
not, to her, as if she spoke to a man like other men, but to a sad
spirit, who knew all the sadness her spirit could ever know.

Often they had walked here together on the terrace, but it was usually
in the afternoon, when Hannaford could persuade her out of the Casino
for a few minutes, to "revive herself with a breath of fresh air," or to
see the gold-and-crimson sunset glory behind the Rock of Hercules. Since
Hannaford had won the money he wanted for the buying of his villa, he
had kept his resolution not to play seriously; but he spent a good deal
of time in the Casino, unobtrusively watching over Mary. He did not
feel the slightest desire to play, he to