It was early, so that we took the table which pleased us, one set a bit aside against a ten-foot hedge, and guarded by a tall bush of tea-roses.  A plump maid hurried across the lawn and spread a cloth on our table and waited, smiling, as if seeing us had simply made her day perfect.  And the General gave the orders.

“The plum-cake is going to be wonderful,” I said then, “and I’m hungry as a bear for tea.  But the best thing I’ve been promised this afternoon is a fairy-story.”

The shrapnel look flashed, keen and bright and afire, but I looked back steadily, not afraid.  I knew what sunlight was going to break; and it broke.

“D’you know,” said he, “I’m really quite mad to talk about myself.  Men always are.  You’ve heard the little tale of the man who said, ’Let’s have a garden-party.  Let’s go out on the lawn and talk about me’?  One becomes a frightful bore quite easily.  So that I’ve made rules—­I don’t hector people about—­about things I’ve been concerned with.  As to the incident I said I’d tell you, that would be quite impossible to tell to—­well, practically anyone.”

My circulatory system did a prance; he could tell it practically to no one, yet he was going to tell it to me!  I instantly said that.  “But you’re going to tell it to me?” I was anxious.

“Child, you flatter well,” said the Marvelous Person, who had brought me picnicking.  “It’s the American touch; there’s a way with American women quite irresistible.”

“Oh—­American women!” I remonstrated.

“Yes, indeed.  They’re delightful—­you’re witches, every mother’s daughter of you.  But you—­ah—­that’s different, now.  You and I, as we decided long ago, on day before yesterday, have a bond.  I can’t help the conviction that you’re the hundred-thousandth person.  You have understanding eyes.  If I were a young man—­And yet it’s not just that; it’s something a bit rarer.  Moreover, they tell me there’s a chap back in America.”

“Yes,” I owned.  “There is a chap.”  And I persisted:  “I’m to have a fairy-story?”

The black-lashed gaze narrowed as it traveled across the velvet turf and the tall roses, down the path of the quiet river.  He had a fine head, thick-thatched and grizzled, not white; his nose was of the straight, short English type, slightly chopped up at the end—­a good-looking nose; his mouth was wide and not chiseled, yet sensitive as well as strong; the jaw was powerful and the chin square with a marked dimple in it; there was also color, the claret and honey of English tanned complexions.  Of course his eyes, with the exaggeratedly thick and long black lashes, were the wonderful part of him, but there is no describing the eyes.  It was the look from them, probably, which made General Cochrane’s face remarkable.  I suppose it was partly that compelling look which had brought about his career.  He was six feet four, lean and military, full of presence, altogether a conspicuously beautiful old lion in a land where every third man is beautiful.