nding, looking out! He dared not step forward,
for fear of falling, but he put out his hand--She saw him. Yes, she saw
him! Wasn't she going to make a sign? Not one? And suddenly he saw her
tear at her dress, pluck something out, and throw it. It fell close to
his feet. He did not pick it up--he wanted to see her face till she was
gone. It looked wonderful--very proud, and pale. She put her hand up to
her lips. Then everything went blurred again and when he could see once
more, the train had vanished. But at his feet was what she had thrown.
He picked it up! All dry and dark, it was the flower she had given him
in the Tyrol, and stolen back from his buttonhole.

Creeping out, past the goods'-shed, he made his way to a field, and lay
down with his face pressed to that withered thing which still had its
scent. . . .

The asphyxiated speculation in his guardian's eyes had not been without
significance. Mark did not go back to Oxford. He went instead to
Rome--to live in his sister's house, and attend a school of sculpture.
That was the beginning of a time when nothing counted except his work.

To Anna he wrote twice, but received no answer. From his tutor he had
one little note:

"MY DEAR LENNAN,

"So! You abandon us for Art? Ah! well--it was your moon, if I
remember--one of them. A worthy moon--a little dusty in these days--a
little in her decline--but to you no doubt a virgin goddess, whose hem,
etc.

"We shall retain the friendliest memories of you in spite of your
defection.

"Once your tutor and still your friend,
"HAROLD STORMER."

After that vacation it was long--very long before he saw Sylvia again.

PART II

SUMMER

I

Gleam of a thousand lights; clack and mutter of innumerable voices,
laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains taking gamblers
back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from the violins of four
fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the cafe; and above, around,
beyond, the dark sky, and the dark mountains, and the dark sea, like some
great dark flower to whose heart is clinging a jewelled beetle. So was
Monte Carlo on that May night of 1887.

But Mark Lennan, at one of the little marble-topped tables, was in too
great maze and exaltation of spirit and of senses to be conscious of its
glare and babel, even of its beauty. He sat so very still that his
neighbours, with the instinctive aversion of the human creature to what
is too remote from its ow