the skin from the banana with which he always commenced breakfast. One
might just as well be asked to shoot a tame dove or tear a pretty flower
to pieces as he expected to take her to task, even if he could, in
honour. And he sought refuge in the words:

"Been out?" Then could have bitten his tongue off. Suppose she
answered: "No."

But she did not so answer. The colour came into her cheeks, indeed, but
she nodded: "It's so lovely!"

How pretty she looked saying that! He had put himself out of court
now--could never tell her what he had seen, after setting, as it were,
that trap for her; and presently he asked:

"Got any plans to-day?"

She answered, without flinching in the least:

"Mark Lennan and I were going to take mules from Mentone up to Gorbio."

He was amazed at her steadiness--never, to his knowledge, having
encountered a woman armoured at every point to preserve a love that flies
against the world. How tell what was under her smile! And in confusion
of feeling that amounted almost to pain he heard her say:

"Will you and Aunt Dolly come?"

Between sense of trusteeship and hatred of spoiling sport; between
knowledge of the danger she was in and half-pitying admiration at the
sight of her; between real disapproval of an illicit and underhand
business (what else was it, after all?) and some dim perception that here
was something he did not begin to be able to fathom--something that
perhaps no one but those two themselves could deal with--between these
various extremes he was lost indeed. And he stammered out:

"I must ask your aunt; she's--she's not very good on a mule."

Then, in an impulse of sheer affection, he said with startling
suddenness: "My dear, I've often meant to ask, are you happy at home?"

"At home?"

There was something sinister about the way she repeated that, as if the
word "home" were strange to her.

She drank her coffee and got up; and the Colonel felt afraid of her,
standing there--afraid of what she was going to tell him. He grew very
red. But, worse than all, she said absolutely nothing; only shrugged her
shoulders with a little smile that went to his heart.

VI

On the wild thyme, under the olives below the rock village of Gorbio,
with their mules cropping at a little distance, those two sat after their
lunch, listening to the cuckoos. Since their uncanny chance meeting that
morning in the gardens, when they sat with their hands just touching,
amazed and