eaned back in her chair, "that my idea
was excellent! Your little restaurant was in its way perfection, but the
heat--does one feel it anywhere, I wonder, as one does in London?"

"Here, at any rate, we have air," Norgate remarked appreciatively.

"We are far removed," she went on, "from the clamour of diners, that
babel of voices, the smell of cooking, the meretricious music. We look
over the house-tops. Soon, just behind that tall building there, you will
see the yellow moon."

They were taking their coffee in Anna's sitting-room, seated in
easy-chairs drawn up to the wide-flung windows. The topmost boughs of
some tall elm trees rustled almost in their faces. Away before them
spread the phantasmagoria of a wilderness of London roofs, softened and
melting into the dim blue obscurity of the falling twilight. Lights were
flashing out everywhere, and above them shone the stars. Norgate drew a
long breath of content.

"It is wonderful, this," he murmured.

"We are at least alone," Anna said, "and I can talk to you. I want to
talk to you. Should you be very much flattered, I wonder, if I were to
say that I have been thinking of little else for the last three or four
days than how to approach you, how to say something to you without any
fear of being misunderstood, how to convince you of my own sincerity?"

"If I am not flattered," he answered, looking at her keenly, "I am at
least content. Please go on."

"You are one of those, I believe," she continued earnestly, "who realise
that somewhere not far removed from the splendour of these summer days, a
storm is gathering. I am one of those who know. England has but a few
more weeks of this self-confident, self-esteeming security. Very soon the
shock will come. Oh! you sit there, my friend, and you are very
monosyllabic, but that is because you do not wholly trust me."

He swung suddenly round upon her and there was an unaccustomed fire
in his eyes.

"May it not be for some other reason?" he asked quickly.

There was a moment's silence. Her own face seemed paler than ever in the
strange half light, but her eyes were wonderful. He told himself with
passionate insistence that they were the eyes of a truthful woman.

"Tell me," she begged, "what reason?"

He leaned towards her.

"It is so hopeless," he said. "I am just a broken diplomat whose career
is ended almost before it is begun, and you--well, you have everything at
your feet. It is foolish of me, isn't it, bu