Lord Fordyce smiled.

“Yes, I believe women spoil Michael terribly, and he is perfectly ruthless with them, too; but I understand that they like that sort of thing.”

“Yes—­most of them do.  It is the simple demonstration of strength which allures them.  You see, man was meant to be strong,” and Moravia laughed softly, “wasn’t he?  He was not designed in the scheme of things to be a soft, silky-voiced creature like Cranley Beaton, for instance—­talking gossip and handing tea-cups; he was just intended to be a fierce, great hunter, rushing round killing his food and capturing his mate; and women have remained such primitive unspoiled darlings, they can still be dominated by these lovely qualities—­when they have a chance to see them.  But, alas! half the men have become so awfully civilized, they haven’t a scrap of this delightful, aboriginal force left!”

“I thought you said you personally preferred more diffident creatures,” and Lord Fordyce smiled whimsically.

“So I do now—­I said I had got over my interest in these savages—­but, of course, I liked them once, as we all do.  It is one of our fatal stages that we have to pass through, like snakes changing their skins; and it makes many of us during the time lay up for ourselves all sorts of regrets.”

Henry sought eagerly through the flowers his beloved’s face.  Had she, too, passed through this stage—­or was it to come?  He asked himself this question a little anxiously, and then he remembered the words of Pere Anselme, and an unrest grew in his heart.  The Princess saw that some shadow had gathered upon his brow, and guessed, since she knew that his thoughts in general turned that way, that it must be something to do with Sabine—­so she said: 

“Sabine and I have come through our happinesses, I trust, since Convent days—­and what we must hope for now is an Indian summer.”

Henry turned rather wistful eyes to her.

“An Indian summer!” he exclaimed.  “A peaceful, beautiful warmth after the riotous joy of the real blazing June!  Tell me about it?”

Moravia sighed softly.

“It is the land where the souls who have gone through the fire of pain live in peace and quiet happiness, content to glow a little before the frosts of age come to quench all passion and pleasure.”

Henry looked down at the grapes on his plate.

“There is autumn afterwards,” he reasoned, “which is full of richness and glorious fruit.  May we not look forward to that?  But yet I know that we all deceive ourselves and live in what may be only a fool’s paradise”—­and then it was that he caught sight of his adored, as she bent forward after her rebuke to Michael—­and with a burst of feeling in his controlled voice, he cried:  “But who would forego his fool’s paradise!”—­and then he took in the fact that some unusual current of emotion must have been passing between the two—­and his heart gave a great bound of foreboding.