ey were
returning to Casa Felice in the evening, leaned over the boat's side and
put her ear close to the water.

When she did so she heard the plash of oars--rhythmical, steady, and
surely very near. For a moment she listened. Then a sort of panic
seized her. She remembered the incident of the evening, the hidden boat,
Paolo's assertion that it was waiting near the house, that it had not
gone. He had said, too, that the unseen rower had begun to row when he
began to sing, had stopped rowing when he stopped singing. A conviction
came to her that this same rower as now following her. But why? Who was
it? She knew nobody on the lake, except Robin. And he--no, it could not
be Robin.

The ash of the oars became more distinct. Her unreasoning fear
increased. With the mystical attention of the great and hidden mind was
now blent a crude human attention. She began to feel really terrified,
and, seizing her oars, she pulled frantically towards the middle of the
lake.

"Viola!"

Out of the darkness it came.

"Viola!"

She stopped and began to tremble. Who--what--could be calling her by
name, here, in the night? She heard the sound of oars plainly now. Then
she saw a thing like a black shadow. It was the prow of an advancing
boat. She sat quite still, with her hands on the oars. The boat came on
till she could see the figure of one man in it, standing up, and rowing,
as the Italian boatmen do when they are alone, with his face set towards
the prow. A few strong strokes and it was beside her, and she was
looking into Rupert Carey's eyes.

CHAPTER XXI

SHE sat still without saying anything. It seemed to her as if she were
on the platform at Manchester House singing the Italian song. Then
the disfigured face of Carey--disfigured by vice as hers now by the
accident--had become as nothing to her. She had seen only his eyes. She
saw only his eyes now. He remained standing up in the faint light with
the oars in his hands looking at her. Round about them tinkled the bells
above the nets.

"You heard me call?" he said at last, almost roughly.

She nodded.

"How did you--?" she began, and stopped.

"I was there this evening when you came in. I heard your boy singing. I
was under the shadow of the woods."

"Why?"

All this time she was gazing into Carey's eyes, and had not seen in them
that he was looking, for the first time, at her altered face. She did
not realise this. She did not remember that her face was alter