y and hopelessly he loved her--and she would
only laugh at him. In self-respect he would spare himself that.

He adhered to this resolution till long past their usual hour for
meeting, and he had made all his preparations for departure, when he was
suddenly seized with an uncontrollable longing to see her once
more--whatever pain it might cost him afterwards. So, with some scorn of
his own weakness, he let himself through the postern gate and went in
search of her. At the end of one of the yew walks was a rusty astrolabe
on a moss-grown marble pedestal, and by this he found her. Her back was
towards him as she faced the western horizon, where clouds of rose and
gold were sailing in a sky of warm apple-green which toned above them to
a luminous silvery blue. On the edge of the slope in the foreground some
cypresses were silhouetted in purplish bronze. She turned as she heard
his footsteps, her face so wondrously fair in the half light that his
heart ached afresh at the sight of her. "I'd quite given up expecting
you, Girofle," she said, with a nonchalance that concealed her _pique_
at his unusual tardiness--for it must be owned that she had become a
trifle exacting of late. "It's so late now that I shall have to go in
very soon."

"I shall not keep you long, Daphne," he replied, determined to show
himself no less indifferent than was she. "I had to prepare for my
journey, as I am leaving Eswareinmal to-night, and I have only come to
say good-bye."

She was not only startled but deeply hurt. If he had really been so
devoted as he had seemed, she thought, he could never have spoken of
leaving her in this casual tone--but she would not let him see how he
had wounded her. "To-night," she repeated, "I'd no idea you meant to go
so soon as this. But I dare say you are only too glad to get away."

"Is one ever sorry," he said, in spite of himself, "to get away from a
place where one has suffered?" She had turned to the astrolabe again,
and was idly tracing out the incisions in one of its hoops with her
supple forefinger, when she next spoke. "Of course I know it must have
been hard for you, Girofle," she said, "still, I hoped--it was very
foolish and conceited of me, I know--but I hoped that perhaps _my_ being
here made it more bearable."

"If you had not been here, I should never have come at all," he said;
"you did not know that, Daphne, but I may tell you now. And at first, it
is true, that just to see and be near you no