ve, I thank her! If it hadn't been for my aunt I
should never have seen--my sister."

"Thank you. You're always kind--and polite. Do you mean it was because
of _her_ you took to what you call 'shuvving'?"

"Exactly."

"But I thought--I thought--"

"What?"

"I--don't dare tell you."

"I should think you might know by this time that you can tell me
anything. You _must_ tell me!"

"I thought it was the beautiful lady who was with you the first time
you saw the battlement garden at Beaucaire, who ruined your life?"

"Beautiful lady--battlement garden? Good heavens, what extraordinary
things we seem to have been thinking about each other: I with my man in
England; you with your beautiful lady--"

"She's a different thing. You _talked_ to me about her," I insisted.
"Surely you must remember?"

"I remember the conversation perfectly. I didn't explain my meaning as a
professor demonstrates a rule in higher mathematics, but I thought you
couldn't help understanding well enough, especially a vain little thing
like you."

"I, vain? Oh!"

"You are, aren't you?"

"I--well, I'm afraid I am, a little."

"You could never have looked in the glass if you weren't. Didn't you
see, or guess, that I was talking about an Ideal whom I had conjured
into being, as a desirable companion in that garden? I can't understand
from the way the conversation ran, how you could have helped it. When I
first went to the battlement garden I was several years younger, steeped
with the spirit of Provence and full of thoughts of Nicolete. I was just
sentimental enough to imagine that such a girl as Nicolete was with me
there, and always afterward I associated the vision of the Ideal with
that garden. I said to myself, that I should like to come there again
with that Ideal in the flesh. And then--then I did come again--with
you."

"But you said--you thought of her always--that because you couldn't
have her--or something of the sort--"

"Well, all that was no surprise to you, was it? You must have known
perfectly well--ever since that night at Avignon when you let your hair
down, anyhow, if not before, that I was trying desperately hard not to
be an idiot about you--and not exactly radiant with joy in the thought
that whoever the man was who would get you, it couldn't be I?"

"O-oh!" I breathed a long, heavenly breath, that seemed to let all the
sorrows and worries pour out of my heart, as the air rushed out of my
lungs. "O-oh, you _can't_