e for giving you my
company unasked. But why don't you say something?"

I asked Miss de Barral what answer she made to this query.

"I made no answer," she said in that even, unemotional low voice which
seemed to be her voice for delicate confidences. "I walked on. He did
not seem to mind. We came to the foot of the quarry where the road
winds up hill, past the place where you were sitting by the roadside
that day. I began to wonder what I should do. After we reached the top
Captain Anthony said that he had not been for a walk with a lady for
years and years--almost since he was a boy. We had then come to where I
ought; to have turned off and struck across a field. I thought of
making a run of it. But he would have caught me up. I knew he would;
and, of course, he would not have allowed me. I couldn't give him the
slip."

"Why didn't you ask him to leave you?" I inquired curiously.

"He would not have taken any notice," she went on steadily. "And what
could I have done then? I could not have started quarrelling with him--
could I? I hadn't enough energy to get angry. I felt very tired
suddenly. I just stumbled on straight along the road. Captain Anthony
told me that the family--some relations of his mother--he used to know
in Liverpool was broken up now, and he had never made any friends since.
All gone their different ways. All the girls married. Nice girls they
were and very friendly to him when he was but little more than a boy.
He repeated: `Very nice, cheery, clever girls.' I sat down on a bank
against a hedge and began to cry."

"You must have astonished him not a little," I observed.

Anthony, it seems, remained on the road looking down at her. He did not
offer to approach her, neither did he make any other movement or
gesture. Flora de Barral told me all this. She could see him through
her tears, blurred to a mere shadow on the white road, and then again
becoming more distinct, but always absolutely still and as if lost in
thought before a strange phenomenon which demanded the closest possible
attention.

Flora learned later that he had never seen a woman cry; not in that way,
at least. He was impressed and interested by the mysteriousness of the
effect. She was very conscious of being looked at, but was not able to
stop herself crying. In fact, she was not capable of any effort.
Suddenly he advanced two steps, stooped, caught hold of her hands lying
on her lap and pulled her u