“You were quite safe,” she said, looking ahead of her.  “I am never away.”  The tail end of a scat of rain beat on their faces.  From the hollow on their left, the wind came booming up.

“I should have thought that for these few months just now,” he suggested, “you might have cared for a change.”

“I have my work here, such as it is,” she answered, a little listlessly.  “If I were in town, for instance, I should have nothing to do.”

“You would meet people.  You must sometimes feel the need of society down here.”

“I doubt whether I should meet the people who would interest me,” she replied, “and in any case I have my work here.  That keeps me occupied.”

They turned into the avenue and soon the long front of the house spread itself out before them.  Jane, who had been momentarily absorbed, looked down at her companion.

“You are alone at the Manor?” she asked.

“Quite alone.”

She became the hostess directly they had passed the portals of the house.  She led him across the hall into her little sanctum.

“This is the room,” she told him, “in which I never do a stroke of work—­sacred to the frivolities alone.  I shall send Morton in to see what you will have to drink, while I change my habit.  You must have something after that walk.  I shan’t be long.”

For the second time she avoided meeting his eves as she left the room.  Tallente stood on the hearth-rug, still looking at the closed door through which she had vanished, puzzled, a little chilled.  He gave his order to the attentive butler who presently appeared and who looked at him with covert interest,—­the Press had been almost hysterically prodigal of his name during the last few weeks.  Then he settled down to wait for her return with an impatience which became almost uncontrollable.  It seemed to him, as he paced restlessly about, that this little apartment, which he remembered so well, had in a measure changed, was revealing a different atmosphere, as though in sympathy with some corresponding change in its presiding spirit.  There was a huge and well-worn couch, smothered with cushions and suggestive of a comfort almost voluptuous; a large easy-chair, into which he presently sank, of the same character.  The wood logs burning in the grate gave out a pleasant sense of warmth.  He took more particular note of the volumes in the well-filled bookcases,—­volumes of poetry, French novels, with a fair sprinkling of modern English fiction.  There was a plaster cast of the Paris Magdalene over the door and one or two fine point etchings, after the style of Heillieu, upon the walls.  There was no writing table in the room, nor any signs of industry, but a black oak gate-table was laden with magazines and fashion papers.  Against the brown walls, a clump of flaming yellow gorse leaned from a distant corner, its faint almond-like fragrance mingling aromatically with the perfume of burning logs and a great bowl of dried lavender.