moteness, his southernness, something velvety and dark. So easily
she might miss him altogether! Within a hair's-breadth she had let
him disappear.

She hurried down. Geoffrey opened the door to her. She smiled at him
in a quick, luminous smile, a magic change in her.

"I could hear Ciccio playing," she said.

Geoffrey spread his rather thick lips in a smile, and jerked his
head in the direction of the back door, with a deep, intimate look
into Alvina's eyes, as if to say his friend was lovesick.

"Shall I go through?" said Alvina.

Geoffrey laid his large hand on her shoulder for a moment, looked
into her eyes, and nodded. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, with a
rather flat, handsome face, well-coloured, and with the look of the
Alpine ox about him, slow, eternal, even a little mysterious. Alvina
was startled by the deep, mysterious look in his dark-fringed
ox-eyes. The odd arch of his eyebrows made him suddenly seem not
quite human to her. She smiled to him again, startled. But he only
inclined his head, and with his heavy hand on her shoulder gently
impelled her towards Ciccio.

When she came out at the back she smiled straight into Ciccio's
face, with her sudden, luminous smile. His hand on the mandoline
trembled into silence. He sat looking at her with an instant
re-establishment of knowledge. And yet she shrank from the long,
inscrutable gaze of his black-set, tawny eyes. She resented him a
little. And yet she went forward to him and stood so that her dress
touched him. And still he gazed up at her, with the heavy,
unspeaking look, that seemed to bear her down: he seemed like some
creature that was watching her for his purposes. She looked aside at
the black garden, which had a wiry goose-berry bush.

"You will come with me to Woodhouse?" she said.

He did not answer till she turned to him again. Then, as she met his
eyes,

"To Woodhouse?" he said, watching her, to fix her.

"Yes," she said, a little pale at the lips.

And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his
mouth. She wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred
his tawny eyes with their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched
her as a cat watches a bird, but without the white gleam of
ferocity. In his eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth, something
fathomless, deepening black and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.

"Will you?" she repeated.

But his eyes had already begun to glimmer their consent. He turned
asi