He was walking with her in Hyde Park; they had turned off into the path by the flower-beds on the Park Lane side.  It was April, between six and seven in the evening, and, except for a few stragglers, they had the walk to themselves.  Louis had been giving her the history of his first campaign in the Soudan, and she was listening with a dreamy, half-suppressed interest, which rose gradually to excitement.  He sat down and drew on the gravel with the point of his walking-stick a rude map of the country, showing the course of the Nile and the line of march, with pebbles for stations, and bare patches for battlefields.  He then began to trace out an extremely complicated plan of the campaign.  She followed the movements of the walking-stick with an intelligence which he would hardly have credited her with.  And, indeed, it was no inconsiderable feat, seeing that for want of a finer instrument Louis’s plan was hopelessly mixed up with his line of march and other matters.

“Was Nevill there?” she asked, casually, at the close of a spirited account of his last engagement.

“No.  He was with the volunteers, farther south.”  He looked at her and her eyes dropped.

“Which is north and which is south?”

The walking-stick indicated the points of the compass.

“I see.  And you were there in that great splodge in the middle.  Go on.  What did you do then?”

The walking-stick staggered in a wavering line eastwards.  But before it could join the Nile, Mrs. Nevill Tyson had rubbed out the map, campaign and all, with the tips of her shoes.

“There’s a park-keeper coming,” said she, “he’ll wonder why we’re making such a mess of his nice gravel-walk.”

The park-keeper came, he looked at the gravel and frowned, he looked at Mrs. Nevill Tyson, smiled benignly, and passed on.  Perhaps he wondered.

They got up and walked as far as the Corner, where they looked at the Achilles statue.  Under the shadow of the pedestal Mrs. Nevill Tyson took a bunch of violets from her waistband.

“What are you going to do with that?” said Louis.

“I’m going to stick it in Achilles’ buttonhole.  Oh, I see, Achilles hasn’t got a buttonhole.  I must put it in yours then.”

She put it in.

Louis’s dark face flushed.  “Why did you do that?”

“I did that—­Because you are a brave man, and I like brave men.”

Still under the shadow of the pedestal, he took her by both hands and looked into her eyes.  “What are you going to do now?” said he.

“Nothing.  We must go back.  We have gone too far,” said she.

“Too far?” He dropped her hands.

She smiled in the old ambiguous, maddening way.  “Yes; much too far.  We shall be late for dinner.”

They turned back by the way they had come.  Near the Marble Arch a small crowd was gathered round a poor street preacher with a raucous voice.  They could hear him as they passed.