And then I looked up and saw him coming toward me, his great dog trotting at his side.  I pulled myself together, and smiled; for Boris was thrusting his friendly nose into my palm, and rubbing his fine head against my shoulder, and his master had dropped lightly down beside me.

I had not seen Mr. Jelnik for several days, and it struck me painfully that the man was pale, that his step dragged, and the brightness of his beauty was dimmed.  He looked older, more careworn.  If he was glad to see me, it was at first a troubled gladness, for he started, and bit his lip.  I wondered, not with jealousy, but with pain, if there was somebody, some beautiful and high-born lady, at sight of whom his heart might have leaped as mine did now.  Was it, perhaps, to forget such a one that he had exiled himself?

“You are such a serene, restful little person!” he said presently, and a change came over his tired face; “and I am such a restless one!  You soothe me like a cool hand on a hot forehead.”

“Restless?—­you?  Why, I thought you the serenest person I had ever known.”

His mocking, gentle smile curved his lips.  But his eyes were not laughing.  For a fleeting, flashing second the whirlpools and the depths were bared in them.  Then the veil fell, the surface lights came out and danced.

“My father was an excellent teacher,” he said, indifferently.  “The whole object of his training was self-control.  He was really a very wonderful man, my father.  But he overlooked one highly important factor in my make-up, my Hynds blood.”

I made no reply.  I was wondering, perplexedly, how I, I of all people, should have been picked up and enmeshed in the web of these Hyndses and their fate.

“Thank you,” said he, gratefully, “for your silence.  Most women would have talked, for the good of my soul.  Why don’t you talk?”

“Because I have nothing to say.”

“You evidently inherited a God-sent reticence from your British forebears.  The British have ‘illuminating flashes of silence.’  It is one of their saving graces.”

I proved it.

Mr. Jelnik, with a whimsical, sidewise glance, drew nearer.

“Why, instead of sitting at the foot of a pine-tree, which is also a reticent creature, are you not sitting at the feet of our friend The Author, who is perfectly willing to illumine the universe?  Very bright man, The Author.  How do you like his secretary?”

“Mr. Johnson?  Oh, very much indeed!  He is charming!”

“I find him so myself.  But he is melting wax before the fire of feminine eyes.  A man in love is a sorry spectacle!”

“Is he?”

“Ach, yes!  Consider my cousin Richard Geddes, for instance.”

At that I winced, remembering the doctor’s eyes when he had spoken of Alicia and of this man.  I looked at Mr. Jelnik now, wonderingly.  If he knew that much, hadn’t he any heart?  He stopped short.  A wrinkle came between his black brows.