t her imaginary accusers, because unconsciously she accused
herself.

Nevertheless, Claude's sudden appearance startled her, though the set of
his shoulders towering through the dusk transported her to the enchanted
land. Here were mountains, and lakes, and palaces, and plashed marble
steps, and the music of lutes, and banquets of ambrosial things to which
daily bread was as nothing. Claude brought them with him. They were the
conditions of that glorious life in which he had his being. They were
the conditions in which she had her being, too, the minute she came
within his sphere.

She passed through some poignant seconds as he approached. For the first
time since her idyl had begun to give a new meaning to existence she
perceived that if he renounced her it would be the one thing she
couldn't bear. She might have the strength to give him up; for him to
give her up would be beyond all the limits of endurance. She put it to
herself tersely in saying it would break her heart.

But he dispelled her fears by smiling. He smiled from what was really a
long way off. Even she could see that he smiled from pleasure, though
she couldn't trace his pleasure to his delicious feeling of surprise. If
she had ceased to be a dryad in a wood, it was to become the Armida of
an enchanted garden. She could have no idea of the figure she presented
to a connoisseur in girls as from a background of palms, fern-trees, and
banked masses of bloom she stared at him with lips half parted and wide,
frightened eyes.

Submitting to this new witchery in the same way as he was yielding to
the heavy, languorous perfumes of the place, Claude smiled continuously.
"The fat's all in the fire, Rosie," he said, in a loud whisper, as he
drew nearer; "so we've nothing to be afraid of any longer."

It was some minutes before she could give concrete significance to these
words. In the mean time she occupied herself with assuring him that
there was no one in the hothouse but herself, and that in this gloaming
they could not be seen from outside. She even found a spot--a kind of
low staging from which foliage plants had recently been moved away--on
which they could sit down. They did so, clinging to each other,
though--conscious of her coarse working-dress--she was swept by a
shameful sense of incongruity in being on such terms with this
faultlessly attired man. She did her best to shrink from sight, to blot
herself out in his embrace, unaware that to Claude th