s ghost might be lurking among the trees: "I
don't think your father can have been a ve-ry good influence on a wild
young man like you."

"The old man's dead. Leave it at that. And who says I'm wild?"

"Aren't you? Don't disappoint me."

"I'm all right," he said with admirable simplicity, "if I don't drink."

"Then you mustn't, and yet I love to think that you're a bold, bad man."

His eyes, which rarely widened, did so now, and in the gathering dusk
she saw a flash of light.

"You see, it makes me feel so brave, George."

"It ought to."

There was danger in his presence and she liked invoking it; but there
was a certain coarseness, also invoked by her, from which she shrank,
towards which she crept, step by step, again. She made no answer to his
words. In her black dress and against the darkness of the wood, she was
hardly more than a face and two small hands. There was a gentle movement
among the trees; they were singing their welcome of a peaceful night;
the running of the stream came loudly, giving itself courage for the
plunge into the wood.

Miriam spoke in a low voice. "It's getting late. The others must have
gone in. They'll wonder where I am."

"And they'd be horrified, I suppose, if they knew."

She bent towards him so that he might see her reproachful face.

"You've spoilt this lovely night. You don't match the sky and stars. I
wish I hadn't met you."

"You needn't have done," he said.

"Are you sorry I did?" she challenged him.

"Oh, I don't know," he muttered almost to himself. "That's it. I never
know."

She choked down the lilt of triumph in her voice. "I'll leave you to
think, about it," she said and, looking at the high fir-wood, she added,
"But I thought we were going to be such friends, after all."

Halkett stood up, and he said nothing, for his feelings were not to be
put into words he could say to her. In her presence he suffered a
mingling of pain and pleasure, anger and delight; cruelty strove in him
with gentleness, coarseness with courtesy; he wanted to kiss her roughly
and cast her off, yet he would have been grateful for the chance of
serving her.

"George," she said quietly.

"Yes?"

"When you think of life, what do you see?"

"I--don't know."

"But you must."

He compelled his imagination. "The moor, and the farm, and the folks in
the town, standing on the pavement, and Oxford Street in London--and
Paris."

"Have you been to Paris?"

"I couldn't think about