ut it had scarcely been
lover-like. It had more of admonition, of warning, even of threat,
than of entreaty in it. It was not the attitude of a lover to his
mistress, but of a master to his pupil.

And what had been the answer, wrung from her finally by his
insistence--the answer to which he had at first violently dissented,
and then reluctantly agreed?

No doubt, if these people had been garbed in the clothes of every day,
I should have felt at the outset that all this was none of my
business, and have crept down the ladder and gone away. But their
strange dress gave to the scene an air at once unreal and theatrical,
and not for an instant had I felt myself an intruder. It was as though
I were looking at the rehearsal of a drama designed for the public
gaze and enacted upon a stage; or, more properly, a pantomime, dim and
figurative, but most impressive. Might it not, indeed, be a rehearsal
of some sort--private theatricals--make-believe? But that scene at
midnight--that could not be make-believe! No, nor was this scene in
the garden. It was in earnest--in deadliest earnest; there was about
it something sinister and threatening; and it was the realisation of
this--the realisation that there was something here not right,
something demanding scrutiny--which kept me chained to my
uncomfortable perch, minute after minute.

But nothing further happened, and I realised, at last, that if I was
to escape an agonising cramp in the leg, I must get down. I put my
feet on the ladder, and then paused for a last look about the grounds.
My eye was caught by a flutter of white among the trees. Someone was
walking along one of the paths; in a moment, straining forward, I saw
it was the woman, and that she was approaching the wall.

And then, as she came nearer, I saw that she was not a woman at all,
but a girl--a girl of eighteen or twenty, to whom the flowing robes
gave, at a distance, the effect of age. I caught only a glimpse of
her face before it was hidden by a clump of shrubbery, but that
glimpse told me that it was a face to set the pulses leaping. I
strained still farther forward, waiting until she should come into
sight again....

Along the path she came, with the sunlight about her, kissing her
hair, her lips, her cheeks--and the next instant her eyes were staring
upwards into mine.

I could not move. I could only stare down at her. I saw the hot colour
sweep across her face; I saw her hand go to her bosom; I saw her