---"

Milbanke looked distressed.

"Oh, my dear----" he began.

But Clodagh's nerves were jarred.

"I know!" she broke in--"I know it's awfully kind of Mr. Tomes! But I
couldn't go to see an archway to-day. I couldn't. I really--really
couldn't."

Mr. Tomes relapsed into a state of pompous offence.

Milbanke looked from one to the other in nervous misery.

"Certainly not--certainly not, my dear!" he agreed. "You are tired; you
have been doing too much." He peered at her through the softly falling
twilight with a look of helpless concern.

She felt, rather than saw the look; and that sensitive dread of being
rendered conspicuous that attacks us all in early life, caused her to
shrink into herself.

"Nonsense!" she said a little coldly. "I am perfectly well. Please go
and see Mr. Tomes's archway. I don't mind being left alone. I would
like to be left alone."

Milbanke stirred uneasily.

"Of course, my dear, if you wish it!" he murmured. "Mr. Tomes, shall
we---- Are you ready----"

He waved his hand towards the canal.

Mr. Tomes drew his loose limbs together, and bowed formally to Clodagh.

"Certainly, if you wish it, Mr. Milbanke!" he said stiffly; and walked
off along the terrace.

Milbanke did not follow him at once. He stood looking at his wife in
pained uncertainty.

"Clodagh, my dear," he began at last, "if there is anything I can
do----"

But Clodagh turned away.

"No," she said almost inaudibly; "no, there is nothing. I'd like to be
alone. I want to be alone."

And Milbanke--perplexed, embarrassed, vaguely unhappy--turned slowly,
and walked across the terrace after his scientific friend.

Clodagh waited until the last sound of Mr. Tomes's loud, rolling voice
had melted into the distance with the departure of his gondola; then
with a stiff, tired movement she rose, walked in her own turn across
the terrace, and, leaning upon the stone parapet, gazed out into the
purple twilight, as she had gazed on the evening of her first arrival.

How long ago--how infinitely far away--that first arrival seemed to
her! With the capacity for the assimilation of new emotions that
belongs to all her race, she had lived more keenly during the last
three days, than during the preceding four years. To one of her
temperament, life is not a matter of time, but of experience. At
eighteen she had been a child; on her twenty-second birthday she had
been a girl; and now, when that birthday was past by but a few mo