bad, for the two
windows were partially shuttered, but it had plainly been a
smoking-room, for there were pipe-racks by the hearth, and on the walls
a number of old school and college photographs, a couple of oars with
emblazoned names, and a variety of stags' and roebucks' heads. There
was no fire in the grate, but a small oil-stove burned inside the
fender. In a stiff-backed chair sat an elderly woman, who seemed to
feel the cold, for she was muffled to the neck in a fur coat. Beside
her, so that the late afternoon light caught her face and head, stood a
girl.

Dickson's first impression was of a tall child. The pose, startled and
wild and yet curiously stiff and self-conscious, was that of a child
striving to remember a forgotten lesson. One hand clutched a
handkerchief, the other was closing and unclosing on a knob of the
chair back. She was staring at Dougal, who stood like a gnome in the
centre of the floor. "Here's the gentlemen I was tellin' ye about,"
was his introduction, but her eyes did not move.

Then Heritage stepped forward. "We have met before, Mademoiselle," he
said. "Do you remember Easter in 1918--in the house in the Trinita dei
Monte?"

The girl looked at him.

"I do not remember," she said slowly.

"But I was the English officer who had the apartments on the floor
below you. I saw you every morning. You spoke to me sometimes."

"You are a soldier?" she asked, with a new note in her voice.

"I was then--till the war finished."

"And now? Why have you come here?"

"To offer you help if you need it. If not, to ask your pardon and go
away."

The shrouded figure in the chair burst suddenly into rapid hysterical
talk in some foreign tongue which Dickson suspected of being French.
Heritage replied in the same language, and the girl joined in with
sharp questions. Then the Poet turned to Dickson.

"This is my friend. If you will trust us we will do our best to help
you."

The eyes rested on Dickson's face, and he realized that he was in the
presence of something the like of which he had never met in his life
before. It was a loveliness greater than he had imagined was permitted
by the Almighty to His creatures. The little face was more square than
oval, with a low broad brow and proud exquisite eyebrows. The eyes were
of a colour which he could never decide on; afterwards he used to
allege obscurely that they were the colour of everything in Spring.
There was a delicate pall