He drew up at the side of the long white road that zigzagged over the moor, and they went together into the springy heath, wading in it after the waxen flowers.

And here Anne sat down in the blazing sunshine and lifted her clear eyes to his.  “I won’t thank you, because we are friends,” she said.  “But this is the best day I have ever had.”

He pushed up his goggles and sat down beside her.  “So you are not sorry you came?” he said.

“I could not be sorry to-day,” she answered.  “How long have you known this perfect place?”

He lay back in the heather with his arms flung wide.  “I came here first one day in the spring, a day in May.  The place was a blaze of gorse and broom—­as if it were on fire.  It suited me—­for I was on fire too.”

In the silence that succeeded his words he turned and leisurely scrutinised her.  She was snapping a stalk of heather with minute care.  A deep flush rose and spread over her face under his eyes.

“Why don’t you look at me?” he said.

Very slowly her eyes came down to him.  He was smiling in a secret fashion, not as if he expected her to smile in return.  The sunlight beat down upon his upturned face.  He blinked at her lazily and stretched every limb in succession, like a cat.

“Let me know when you begin to feel bored,” he said.  “I am quite ready to amuse you.”

“I thought it was only the bores who were ever bored,” she said.

He opened his eyes a little.  “Did I say that or did you?”

She returned to her heather-pulling.  “I believe you said it originally.”

“I remember,” he returned composedly.  “It was on the night you bestowed upon me the office of court-jester, the night you dreamed I was the Knave of Diamonds, the night that—­”

She interrupted very gently but very resolutely; “The night that we became friends, Nap.”

“A good many things happened that night,” he remarked, pulling off his cap and pitching it from him.

“Is that wise?” she said.  “The sun is rather strong.”

He sat up, ignoring the warning.  “Anne,” he said, “have you ever dreamed about me since that night?”

She was silent, all her attention concentrated upon her bunch of heather.  His eyes left her face and began to study her hands.

After a moment he pulled a bit of string out of his pocket and without a word proceeded to wind it round the stalks she held.  As he knotted it he spoke.

“So that is why you were afraid of me to-day.  I knew there was something.  I winded it the moment we met.  Whenever I hold your hand in mine I can see into your soul.  What was it, Anne?  The Knave of Diamonds on a black mare—­riding to perdition?”

He laughed at her softly as though she had been a child.  He was still watching her hands.  Suddenly he laid his own upon them and looked into her face.

“Or was it just a savage?” he asked her quietly.