And yet, when his life was growing all but placid, across it shot some tremor of disquieting knowledge.

One evening, after a busy day among his piece-goods, he had walked afield with Heywood, and back by an aimless circuit through the twilight.  His companion had been taciturn, of late; and they halted, without speaking, where a wide pool gleamed toward a black, fantastic belt of knotted willows and sharp-curving roofs.  Through these broke the shadow of a small pagoda, jagged as a war-club of shark’s teeth.  Vesper cymbals clashed faintly in a temple, and from its open door the first plummet of lamplight began to fathom the dark margin.  A short bridge curved high, like a camel’s hump, over the glimmering half-circle of a single arch.  Close by, under a drooping foreground of branches, a stake upheld an oblong placard of neat symbols, like a cartouche to explain a painting.

“It is very beautiful,” ventured Rudolph, twisting up his blond moustache with satisfaction.  “Very sightly.  I would say—­picturesque, no?”

“Very,” said Heywood, absently.  “Willow Pattern.”

“And the placard, so finishing, so artistic—­That says?”

“Eh, what?  Oh, I wasn’t listening.”  Heywood glanced carelessly at the upright sentence.  That’s a notice:—­

“‘Girls May Not be Drowned in This Pond.’”

He started on, without comment.  Without reply, Rudolph followed, gathering as he walked the force of this tremendous hint.  Slow, far-reaching, it poisoned the elegiac beauty of the scene, alienated the night, and gave to the fading country-side a yet more ancient look, sombre and implacable.  He was still pondering this, when across their winding foot-path, with a quick thud of hoofs, swept a pair of equestrian silhouettes.  It was half glimpse, half conjecture,—­the tough little ponies trotting stubbornly, a rider who leaned across laughing, and a woman who gayly cried at him:  “You really do understand me, don’t you?” The two jogging shadows melted in the bamboo tracery, like things blown down the wind.  But for years Rudolph had known the words, the laugh, the beguiling cadence, and could have told what poise of the head went with them, what dangerous glancing light.  Suddenly, without reason, he felt a gust of rage.  It was he that understood.  It was to him these things belonged.  The memory of her weakness was lost in the shining memory of her power.  He should be riding there, in the dusk of this lonely and cruel land.

Heywood had thrown after them a single gloomy stare, down the pointed aisle of bamboos.

“Well matched!” he growled.  “Chantel—­He bounds in the saddle, and he bounds afoot!”

Rudolph knew that he had hated Chantel at sight.