enetrating significance, the fuller for the break that left it vague.

Speech between them was commanded; he could not be suffered to remain.
She descended upon a sheltered pathway running along a ditch, the border
of pastures where cattle cropped, raised heads, and resumed their one
comforting occupation.

Diana gazed on them, smarting from the buffets of the wind she had met.

'No play of their tails to-day'; she said, as she slackened her steps.
'You left Lady Esquart well?'

'Lady Esquart . . . I think was well. I had to see you. I thought you
would be with her in Berkshire. She told me of a little sea-side place
close to Caen.'

'You had to see me?'

'I miss you now if it's a day!'

'I heard a story in London . . .'

'In London there are many stories. I heard one. Is there a foundation for
it?'

'No.'

He breathed relieved. 'I wanted to see you once before . . . if it was
true. It would have made a change in my life-a gap.'

'You do me the honour to like my Sunday evenings?'

'Beyond everything London can offer.'

'A letter would have reached me.'

'I should have had to wait for the answer. There is no truth in it?'

Her choice was to treat the direct assailant frankly or imperil her
defence by the ordinary feminine evolutions, which might be taken for
inviting: poor pranks always.

'There have been overtures,' she said.

'Forgive me; I have scarcely the right to ask . . . speak of it!'

'My friends may use their right to take an interest in my fortunes.'

'I thought I might, on my way to Paris, turn aside . . . coming by this
route.'

'If you determined not to lose much of your time.'

The coolness of her fencing disconcerted a gentleman conscious of his
madness. She took instant advantage of any circuitous move; she gave him
no practicable point. He was little skilled in the arts of attack, and
felt that she checked his impetuousness; respected her for it, chafed at
it, writhed with the fervours precipitating him here, and relapsed on his
pleasure in seeing her face, hearing her voice.

'Your happiness, I hope, is the chief thought in such a case,' he said.

'I am sure you would consider it.'

'I can't quite forget my own.'

'You compliment an ambitious hostess.'

Dacier glanced across the pastures, 'What was it that tempted you to this
place?'

'A poet would say it looks like a figure in the shroud. It has no
features; it has a sort of grandeur belonging to death. I heard of it