and
in front of the house the final bargaining took place. There was a
difference of five hundred dollars between them, and the old man fought
stubbornly for it; and though Orlando giggled, it was clear he was no
fool at a bargain, and that he had many resources. At last he threw
doubt upon the pedigree of a bull. With a snarl Mazarine strode into the
house. He had that pedigree, and it was indisputable. He would show the
young swaggerer that he could not be caught anywhere in this game.

As Joel Mazarine entered the doorway of the house Orlando giggled again,
because he had two or three other useful traps ready, and this was
really like baiting a bull. Every thrust made this bull more angry; and
Orlando knew that if he became angry enough he could bring things to a
head with a device by which the old man would be forced to yield; for he
did not want to buy, as much as Mazarine wished to sell.

The device, however, was never used, and Orlando ceased giggling
suddenly, for chancing to glance up he saw a face at a window, pale,
exquisite, delicate, with eyes that stared and stared at him as though
he were a creature from some other world.

Such a look he had never seen in anybody's eyes; such a look Louise
Mazarine had never given in her life before. Something had drawn her out
of her bed in spite of herself--a voice which was not that of old Joel
Mazarine, but a new, fresh, vibrant voice which broke into little spells
of inconsequent laughter. She loved inconsequent laughter, and never
heard it at Tralee. She had crept from her bed and to the window, and
before he saw her, she had watched him with a look which slowly became
an awakening: as though curtains had been drawn aside revealing a new,
strange, ecstatic world.

Louise Mazarine had seen something she had never seen before, because
a feeling had been born in her which she had never felt. She had never
fully known what sex was, or in any real sense what man meant. This
romantic, picturesque, buoyant figure of youth struck her as the rock
was struck by Moses; and for the first time in all her days she was
wholly alive. Also, for the first time in his life, Orlando Guise felt a
wonder which in spite of the hereditary romance in him had never touched
him before. Like Ferdinand and Miranda in The Tempest, "they changed
eyes."

A heavy step was heard coming through the hallway, and at once the
exquisite, staring face at the window vanished-while Orlando Guise
turn