ated.

"Give me my tea," Domini said.

When she was drinking it she asked:

"Do you know at what time the train leaves Beni-Mora--the passenger
train?"

"Yes, Mam'selle. There is only one in the day. It goes soon after
twelve. Monsieur Helmuth told me."

"Oh!"

"What gown will--?"

"Any gown--the white linen one I had on yesterday."

"Yes, Mam'selle."

"No, not that. Any other gown. Is it to be hot?"

"Very hot, Mam'selle. There is not a cloud in the sky."

"How strange!" Domini said, in a low voice that Suzanne did not hear.
When she was up and dressed she said:

"I am going out to Count Anteoni's garden. I think I'll--yes, I'll take
a book with me."

She went into her little salon and looked at the volumes scattered about
there, some books of devotion, travel, books on sport, Rossetti's and
Newman's poems, some French novels, and the novels of Jane Austen, of
which, oddly, considering her nature, she was very fond. For the first
time in her life they struck her as shrivelled, petty chronicles of
shrivelled, bloodless, artificial lives. She turned back into her
bedroom, took up the little white volume of the _Imitation_, which lay
always near her bed, and went out into the verandah. She looked neither
to right nor left, but at once descended the staircase and took her way
along the arcade.

When she reached the gate of the garden she hesitated before knocking
upon it. The sight of the villa, the arches, the white walls and
clustering trees she knew so well hurt her so frightfully, so
unexpectedly, that she felt frightened and sick, and as if she must go
away quickly to some place which she had never seen, and which could
call up no reminiscences in her mind.

Perhaps she would have gone into the oasis, or along the path that
skirted the river bed, had not Smain softly opened the gate and come out
to meet her, holding a great velvety rose in his slim hand.

He gave it to her without a word, smiling languidly with eyes in which
the sun seemed caught and turned to glittering darkness, and as she took
it and moved it in her fingers, looking at the wine-coloured petals on
which lay tiny drops of water gleaming with thin and silvery lights, she
remembered her first visit to the garden, and the mysterious enchantment
that had floated out to her through the gate from the golden vistas and
the dusky shadows of the trees, the feeling of romantic expectation that
had stirred within her as she stepped on to t