“What bargain could you make that I would not agree to willingly?” he asked.

“Perhaps some day I shall make one with you—­or want to—­that you will not like,” she said, “and then I shall remind you of this day and your gallant speech.”

“And I shall say then as I say now.  I will make any bargain with you, so long as it is a bargain which benefits us both.”

“Ah, you are a Normand, you hedge!” she laughed, but he was serious.

They walked all around the laiterie, and all the time she was gay and whimsical, and to herself she was saying, “I am unutterably happy, but we must not talk of love.”

“Now you have had enough of this,” Lord Bracondale said, when they were again in view of the house, “and I am going to take you into a forest like the babes in the woods, and we shall go and lose ourselves and forget the world altogether.  The very sight of these harmless tourists in the distance jars upon me to-day.  I want you alone and no one else.  Come.”

And she went.

“I have never been here before,” said Theodora, as they turned into the Forest of Marly.  “And you have been wise in your choice so far.  I love trees.”

“You see how I study and care for the things which belong to me,” said Hector.  It gave him ridiculous pleasure to announce that sentence again—­ridiculous, unwarrantable pleasure.

Theodora turned her head away a little.  She would like to have continued the subject, but she did not dare.

Presently they came to a side allee, and after going up it about a mile the automobile stopped, and they got out and walked down a green glade to the right.

Oh, and I wonder if any of you who read know the Forest of Marly, and this one green glade that leads down to the centre of a star where five avenues meet?  It is all soft grass and splendid trees, and may have been a rendezvous de chasse in the good old days, when life—­for the great—­was fair in France.

It is very lonely now, and if you want to spend some hours in peace you can almost count upon solitude there.

“Now, is not this beautiful?” he asked her, as they neared the centre, “and soon you will see why I carry this rug over my arm.  I am going to take you right to the middle of the star until you see five paths for you to choose from, all green and full of glancing sunlight, and when you have selected one we will penetrate down it and sit under a tree.  Is it good—­my idea?”

“Very good,” said Theodora.  Then she was silent until they reached the rond-point.

There was that wonderful sense of aloofness and silence—­hardly even the noise of a bird.  Only the green, green trees, and here and there a shaft of sunlight turning them into the shade of a lizard’s back.

An ideal spot for—­poets and dreamers—­and lovers—­Theodora thought.

“Now we are here!  Look this way and that!  Five paths for us to choose from!”