"I've just refused to take back a sum of money--that belonged to
me."

Archer sprang up and moved a step or two away. She had furled her
parasol and sat absently drawing patterns on the gravel. Presently he
came back and stood before her.

"Some one--has come here to meet you?"

"Yes."

"With this offer?"

She nodded.

"And you refused--because of the conditions?"

"I refused," she said after a moment.

He sat down by her again. "What were the conditions?"

"Oh, they were not onerous: just to sit at the head of his table now
and then."

There was another interval of silence. Archer's heart had slammed
itself shut in the queer way it had, and he sat vainly groping for a
word.

"He wants you back--at any price?"

"Well--a considerable price. At least the sum is considerable for me."

He paused again, beating about the question he felt he must put.

"It was to meet him here that you came?"

She stared, and then burst into a laugh. "Meet him--my husband? HERE?
At this season he's always at Cowes or Baden."

"He sent some one?"

"Yes."

"With a letter?"

She shook her head. "No; just a message. He never writes. I don't
think I've had more than one letter from him." The allusion brought
the colour to her cheek, and it reflected itself in Archer's vivid
blush.

"Why does he never write?"

"Why should he? What does one have secretaries for?"

The young man's blush deepened. She had pronounced the word as if it
had no more significance than any other in her vocabulary. For a
moment it was on the tip of his tongue to ask: "Did he send his
secretary, then?" But the remembrance of Count Olenski's only letter
to his wife was too present to him. He paused again, and then took
another plunge.

"And the person?"--

"The emissary? The emissary," Madame Olenska rejoined, still smiling,
"might, for all I care, have left already; but he has insisted on
waiting till this evening ... in case ... on the chance ..."

"And you came out here to think the chance over?"

"I came out to get a breath of air. The hotel's too stifling. I'm
taking the afternoon train back to Portsmouth."

They sat silent, not looking at each other, but straight ahead at the
people passing along the path. Finally she turned her eyes again to
his face and said: "You're not changed."

He felt like answering: "I was, till I saw you again;" but instead he
stood up abruptly and glanced about him at the untidy sw