that glance, nightlike in the sunshine, expressively still in the brutal
unrest of the street.

"So Captain Anthony joined you--did he?"

"He opened a field-gate and walked out on the road. He crossed to my
side and went on with me. He had his pipe in his hand. He said: 'Are
you going far this morning?'"

These words (I was watching her white face as she spoke) gave me a slight
shudder. She remained demure, almost prim. And I remarked:

"You have been talking together before, of course."

"Not more than twenty words altogether since he arrived," she declared
without emphasis. "That day he had said 'Good morning' to me when we met
at breakfast two hours before. And I said good morning to him. I did
not see him afterwards till he came out on the road."

I thought to myself that this was not accidental. He had been observing
her. I felt certain also that he had not been asking any questions of
Mrs. Fyne.

"I wouldn't look at him," said Flora de Barral. "I had done with looking
at people. He said to me: 'My sister does not put herself out much for
us. We had better keep each other company. I have read every book there
is in that cottage.' I walked on. He did not leave me. I thought he
ought to. But he didn't. He didn't seem to notice that I would not talk
to him."

She was now perfectly still. The wretched little parasol hung down
against her dress from her joined hands. I was rigid with attention. It
isn't every day that one culls such a volunteered tale on a girl's lips.
The ugly street-noises swelling up for a moment covered the next few
words she said. It was vexing. The next word I heard was "worried."

"It worried you to have him there, walking by your side."

"Yes. Just that," she went on with downcast eyes. There was something
prettily comical in her attitude and her tone, while I pictured to myself
a poor white-faced girl walking to her death with an unconscious man
striding by her side. Unconscious? I don't know. First of all, I felt
certain that this was no chance meeting. Something had happened before.
Was he a man for a _coup-de-foudre_, the lightning stroke of love? I
don't think so. That sort of susceptibility is luckily rare. A world of
inflammable lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type would very soon end in
barbarism and misery. But it is a fact that in every man (not in every
woman) there lives a lover; a lover who is called out in all his
potentialities often by