Sailing from the Thames ten days ago they had put into Naples that morning for coal, and taking advantage of the opportunity he had run up to Rome, remembering that I was at school here, but never expecting to see me, and coming upon me by the merest accident in the world—­something having said to him, “Let’s go in here and look at this queer old church.”

He had to leave to-morrow at two, though, having to sail the same night, but of course it would be luck to go farther south than Charcot and make another attack on the Antarctic night.

I could see that life was full of faith and hope and all good things for him, and remembering some episodes of the past I said: 

“So you are going ‘asploring’ in earnest at last?”

“At last,” he answered, and we looked into each other’s eyes and laughed as we stood together on the church steps, with little tender waves of feeling from our childhood sweeping to our feet.

“And you?” he said.  “You look just the same.  I knew you instantly.  Yet you are changed too.  So grown and so . . . so wonderfully. . . .”

I knew what he meant to say, and being too much of a child to pretend not to know, and too much of a woman (notwithstanding my nun-like impulses) not to find joy in it, I said I was glad.

“You’ve left the Convent, I see.  When did that happen?”

I told him three weeks ago—­that my father had come for me and we were going back to Ellan.

“And then?  What are you going to do then?” he asked.

For a moment I felt ashamed to answer, but at last I told him that I was going home to be married.

“Married?  When?  To whom?”

I said I did not know when, but it was to be to the young Lord Raa.

“Raa?  Did you say Raa?  That . . .  Good G——­But surely you know. . . .”

He did not finish what he was going to say, so I told him I did not know anything, not having seen Lord Raa since I came to school, and everything having been arranged for me by my father.

“Not seen him since . . . everything arranged by your father?”

“Yes.”

Then he asked me abruptly where I was staying, and when I told him he said he would walk back with me to the hotel.

His manner had suddenly changed, and several times as we walked together up the Tritoni and along the Du Marcelli he began to say something and then stopped.

“Surely your father knows. . . .”

“If he does, I cannot possibly understand. . . .”

I did not pay as much attention to his broken exclamations as I should have done but for the surprise and confusion of coming so suddenly upon him again; and when, as we reached the hotel, he said: 

“I wonder if your father will allow me to speak. . . .”

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted,” I said, and then, in my great impatience, I ran upstairs ahead of him and burst into my father’s room, crying: