ounger." Won't you look at this? How
beautiful! How interesting is its grey sky! Here are a set of pictures
by Wouvermans--pictures of hawking. Here is a Brouwer, a very rare Dutch
master, a very fine example too. And here is a Gerard Dow. Miss Innes,
will you look at this composition? Is it not admirable? That rich
curtain hung across the room, how beautifully painted, how sonorous in
colour."

"Ah! she's playing a virginal!" said Evelyn, suddenly. "She is like me,
playing and thinking of other things. You can see she is not thinking of
the music. She is thinking ... she is thinking of the world outside."

This pleased him, and he said, "Yes, I suppose it is like your life; it
is full of the same romance and mystery."

"What romance, what mystery? Tell me."

They sat down on the bench in the third room, opposite the colonnade by
Watteau, to which his thoughts frequently went, while telling her how,
when cruising among the Greek Islands, he had often seen her, sometimes
sitting in the music-room playing the virginal, sometimes walking in the
ornamental park under a wet, grey sky, a somewhat desolate figure
hurrying through shadows of storm.

"How strange you should think all that. It is quite true. I often walked
in that hateful park."

"You will never be able to stand another winter in Dulwich."

She raised her eyes, and he noticed with an inward glee their little
frightened look.

"I thought of you in that ornamental park watching London from the crest
of the hill; and I thought of London--great, unconscious London--waiting
to be awakened with the chime of your voice."

She turned her head aside, overcome by his praise, and he exulted,
seeing the soft rose tint mount into the whiteness of her face.

"You must not say such things to me. How you do know how to praise!"

"You don't realise how wonderful you are."

"You should not say such things, for if they are not true, I shall be so
miserable."

"Of course they are true," he said, hushing his voice; and in his
exultation there was a savour of cruelty. "You don't realise how
wonderful your story is. As I sailed through the Greek Isles, I thought
less and less of that horrid, red-haired woman; your face, dim at first,
grew clearer and clearer.... All my thoughts, all things converged to
you and were absorbed in you, until, one day on the deck, I felt that
you were unhappy; the knowledge came, how and whence I know not; I only
know that the impulse to ret