ach.

"It is very kind of you to say that," he said, and he turned to her
suddenly. "Because you mean it."

"It is true," said Violet simply; and the next moment she was aware that
someone very young was standing before her in that Indian garden beneath
the starlit sky and faltering out statements as to his unworthiness. The
statements were familiar to her ears, but there was this which was
unfamiliar: they stirred her to passion.

She stepped back, throwing out a hand as if to keep him from her.

"Don't," she whispered. "Don't!"

She spoke like one who is hurt. Amongst the feelings which had waked in
her, dim and for the most part hardly understood, two at all events were
clear. One a vague longing for something different from the banal path
she daily trod, the other a poignant regret that she was as she was.

But Linforth caught the hand which she held out to thrust him off, and,
clasping it, drew her towards him.

"I love you," he said; and she answered him in desperation:

"But you don't know me."

"I know that I want you. I know that I am not fit for you."

And Violet Oliver laughed harshly.

But Dick Linforth paid no attention to that laugh. His hesitation had
gone. He found that for this occasion only he had the gift of tongues.
There was nothing new and original in what he said. But, on the other
hand, he said it over and over again, and the look upon his face and the
tone of his voice were the things which mattered. At the opera it is the
singer you listen to, and not the words of the song. So in this rose
garden Violet Oliver listened to Dick Linforth rather than to what he
said. There was audible in his voice from sentence to sentence, ringing
through them, inspiring them, the reverence a young man's heart holds for
the woman whom he loves.

"You ought to marry, not me, but someone better," she cried. "There is
someone I know--in--England--who--"

But Linforth would not listen. He laughed to scorn the notion that there
could be anyone better than Violet Oliver; and with each word he spoke he
seemed to grow younger. It was as though a miracle had happened. He
remained in her eyes what he really was, a man head and shoulders above
her friends, and in fibre altogether different. Yet to her, and for her,
he was young, and younger than the youngest. In spite of herself, the
longing at her heart cried with a louder voice. She sought to stifle it.

"There is the Road," she cried. "That is first with