erse had come into Peter's mind, and kept running there
obstinately.

"Really," he said to himself, "feature for feature, down to the very
'cataract leaping in glory,' the scene might have been got up, apres
coup, to illustrate it." And he began to repeat the beautiful hackneyed
words, under his breath....

But about midway of the third line he was interrupted.

II

"It's not altogether a bad sort of view--is it?" some one said, in
English.

The voice was a woman's. It was clear and smooth; it was crisp-cut,
distinguished.

Peter glanced about him.

On the opposite bank of the Aco, in the grounds of Ventirose, five or
six yards away, a lady was standing, looking at him, smiling.

Peter's eyes met hers, took in her face.... And suddenly his heart gave
a jump. Then it stopped dead still, tingling, for a second. Then it flew
off, racing perilously.--Oh, for reasons--for the best reasons in the
world: but thereby hangs my tale.

She was a young woman, tall, slender, in a white frock, with a white
cloak, an indescribable complexity of soft lace and airy ruffles, round
her shoulders. She wore no hat. Her hair, brown and warm in shadow,
sparkled, where it caught the light, in a kind of crinkly iridescence,
like threads of glass.

Peter's heart (for the best reasons in the world) was racing perilously.
"It's impossible--impossible--impossible"--the words strummed themselves
to its rhythm. Peter's wits (for had not the impossible come to pass?)
were in a perilous confusion. But he managed to rise from his rustic
bench, and to achieve a bow.

She inclined her head graciously.

"You do not think it altogether bad--I hope?" she questioned, in her
crisp-cut voice, raising her eyebrows slightly, with a droll little
assumption of solicitude.

Peter's wits were in confusion; but he must answer her. An automatic
second-self, summoned by the emergency, answered for him.

"I think one might safely call it altogether good."

"Oh--?" she exclaimed.

Her eyebrows went up again, but now they expressed a certain whimsical
surprise. She threw back her head, and regarded the prospect critically.

"It is not, then, too spectacular, too violent?" she wondered, returning
her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to defer to his
opinion. "Not too much like a decor de theatre?"

"One should judge it," his automatic second-self submitted, "with some
leniency. It is, after all, only unaided Nature."

A spark f