“Why, of course!” I cried.

“But I cannot promise—­”

“I dare say not,” I said.  “I don’t expect a promise.”

“I mean I can’t even promise to try the move I’ve in my mind.  One must see first . . . h’m!”

“All right.  I’ll take the chance.  I’ll wait for you as long as you like.  What else have I to do in this infernal hole of a port!”

Before I had uttered my last words we had set off at a swinging pace.  We turned a couple of corners and entered a street completely empty of traffic, of semi-rural aspect, paved with cobblestones nestling in grass tufts.  The house came to the line of the roadway; a single story on an elevated basement of rough-stones, so that our heads were below the level of the windows as we went along.  All the jalousies were tightly shut, like eyes, and the house seemed fast asleep in the afternoon sunshine.  The entrance was at the side, in an alley even more grass-grown than the street:  a small door, simply on the latch.

With a word of apology as to showing me the way, Jacobus preceded me up a dark passage and led me across the naked parquet floor of what I supposed to be the dining-room.  It was lighted by three glass doors which stood wide open on to a verandah or rather loggia running its brick arches along the garden side of the house.  It was really a magnificent garden:  smooth green lawns and a gorgeous maze of flower-beds in the foreground, displayed around a basin of dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the distance the massed foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other houses.  The town might have been miles away.  It was a brilliantly coloured solitude, drowsing in a warm, voluptuous silence.  Where the long, still shadows fell across the beds, and in shady nooks, the massed colours of the flowers had an extraordinary magnificence of effect.  I stood entranced.  Jacobus grasped me delicately above the elbow, impelling me to a half-turn to the left.

I had not noticed the girl before.  She occupied a low, deep, wickerwork arm-chair, and I saw her in exact profile like a figure in a tapestry, and as motionless.  Jacobus released my arm.

“This is Alice,” he announced tranquilly; and his subdued manner of speaking made it sound so much like a confidential communication that I fancied myself nodding understandingly and whispering:  “I see, I see.” . . .  Of course, I did nothing of the kind.  Neither of us did anything; we stood side by side looking down at the girl.  For quite a time she did not stir, staring straight before her as if watching the vision of some pageant passing through the garden in the deep, rich glow of light and the splendour of flowers.

Then, coming to the end of her reverie, she looked round and up.  If I had not at first noticed her, I am certain that she too had been unaware of my presence till she actually perceived me by her father’s side.  The quickened upward movement of the heavy eyelids, the widening of the languid glance, passing into a fixed stare, put that beyond doubt.