[Illustration:  “She shook her head, and said,...  ’Nobody has been here, except—­’”]

She shook her head, and said, with her delicate quiet:  “Nobody has been here, except—­” She glanced at Lanfear, who smiled, but saw no opening for himself in the strange situation.  Then she said:  “I think I will go and lie down a while, now, papa.  I’m rather tired.  Good-bye,” she said, giving Lanfear her hand; it felt limp and cold; and then she turned to her father again.  “Don’t you come, papa!  I can get back perfectly well by myself.  Stay with—­”

“I will go with you,” her father said, “and if Dr. Lanfear doesn’t mind coming—­”

“Certainly I will come,” Lanfear said, and he passed to the girl’s right; she had taken her father’s arm; but he wished to offer more support if it were needed.  When they had climbed to the open flowery space before the hotel, she seemed aware of the groups of people about.  She took her hand from her father’s arm, as if unwilling to attract their notice by seeming to need its help, and swept up the gravelled path between him and Lanfear, with her flowing walk.

Her father fell back, as they entered the hotel door, and murmured to Lanfear:  “Will you wait till I come down?” ...  “I wanted to tell you about my daughter,” he explained, when he came back after the quarter of an hour which Lanfear had found rather intense.  “It’s useless to pretend you wouldn’t have noticed—­Had nobody been with you after I left you, down there?” He twisted his head in the direction of the pavilion, where they had been breakfasting.

“Yes; Mrs. Bell and her daughters,” Lanfear answered, simply.

“Of course!  Why do you suppose my daughter denied it?” Mr. Gerald asked.

“I suppose she—­had her reasons,” Lanfear answered, lamely enough.

“No reason, I’m afraid,” Mr. Gerald said, and he broke out hopelessly:  “She has her mind sound enough, but not—­not her memory.  She had forgotten that they were there!  Are you going to stay in San Remo?” he asked, with an effect of interrupting himself, as if in the wish to put off something, or to make the ground sure before he went on.

“Why,” Lanfear said, “I hadn’t thought of it.  I stopped—­I was going to Nice—­to test the air for a friend who wishes to bring his invalid wife here, if I approve—­but I have just been asking myself why I should go to Nice when I could stay at San Remo.  The place takes my fancy.  I’m something of an invalid myself—­at least I’m on my vacation—­and I find a charm in it, if nothing better.  Perhaps a charm is enough.  It used to be, in primitive medicine.”