When they went out at last on to the terrace the whole garden was transformed into a paradise of glowing colours.  The lake shone like a prism of glass, and over all the stars hung as if suspended very near the earth.

Lucas went down to the edge of the ice, leaning on his valet.  Bertie, clad as a Roman soldier, was already vanishing in the distance with someone attired as a Swiss peasant girl.  Mrs. Errol, sensibly wrapped in a large motoring coat, was maintaining a cheery conversation with the rector, who looked cold and hungry and smiled bluely at everything she said.

Anne stood by her host and watched the gay scene silently.  “You ought to be skating,” he said presently.

She shook her head.  “Not yet.  I like watching.  It makes me think of when I was a girl.”

“Not so very long ago, surely!” he said, with a smile.

“Seven years,” she answered.

“My dear Lady Carfax!”

“Yes, seven years,” she repeated, and though she also smiled there was a note of unspeakable dreariness in her voice.  “I was married on my eighteenth birthday.”

“My dear Lady Carfax,” he said again.  And with that silence fell once more between them, but in some magic fashion his sympathy imparted itself to her.  She could feel it as one feels sudden sunshine on a cold day.  It warmed her to the heart.

She moved at length, turning towards him, and at once he spoke, as if she had thereby set him at liberty to do so.

“Shall I tell you what I do when I find myself very badly up against anything?” he said.

“Yes, tell me.”  Instinctively she drew nearer to him.  There was that about this man that attracted her irresistibly.

“It’s a very simple remedy,” he said, “simpler than praying.  One can’t always pray.  I just open the windows wide, Lady Carfax.  It’s a help—­even that.”

“Ah!” she said quickly.  “I think your windows must be always open.”

“It seems a pity to shut them,” he answered gently.  “There is always a sparrow to feed, anyway.”

She laughed rather sadly.  “Yes, there are always sparrows.”

“And sometimes bigger things,” he said, “things one wouldn’t miss for half creation.”

“Or lose again for the other half,” said the cool voice of a skater who had just glided up.

Anne started a little, but Lucas scarcely moved.

“Lady Carfax is waiting to go on the ice,” he said.

“And I am waiting to take her,” the new-comer said.

His slim, graceful figure in its black, tight-fitting garb sparkled at every turn.  His eyes shone through his velvet mask like the eyes of an animal in the dark.

He glided nearer, but for some reason inexplicable to herself, Anne stepped back.

“I don’t think I will,” she said.  “I am quite happy where I am.”

“You will be happier with me,” said the harlequin, with imperial confidence.