“Trust your instinct,” I advised her.  “Most women trust to that, and make no worse mistakes than men.  In this case you have your brother’s letter to help you.”

She drew a deep breath like a light sigh.  “Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences,” she quoted as if to herself.  But I caught the wistful murmur distinctly.

“High praise,” I whispered to her.

“The highest possible.”

“So high that, like the award of happiness, it is more fit to come only at the end of a life.  But still no common or altogether unworthy personality could have suggested such a confident exaggeration of praise and...”

“Ah!” She interrupted me ardently.  “And if you had only known the heart from which that judgment has come!”

She ceased on that note, and for a space I reflected on the character of the words which I perceived very well must tip the scale of the girl’s feelings in that young man’s favour.  They had not the sound of a casual utterance.  Vague they were to my Western mind and to my Western sentiment, but I could not forget that, standing by Miss Haldin’s side, I was like a traveller in a strange country.  It had also become clear to me that Miss Haldin was unwilling to enter into the details of the only material part of their visit to the Chateau Borel.  But I was not hurt.  Somehow I didn’t feel it to be a want of confidence.  It was some other difficulty—­a difficulty I could not resent.  And it was without the slightest resentment that I said—­

“Very well.  But on that high ground, which I will not dispute, you, like anyone else in such circumstances, you must have made for yourself a representation of that exceptional friend, a mental image of him, and—­please tell me—­you were not disappointed?”

“What do you mean?  His personal appearance?”

“I don’t mean precisely his good looks, or otherwise.”

We turned at the end of the alley and made a few steps without looking at each other.

“His appearance is not ordinary,” said Miss Haldin at last.

“No, I should have thought not—­from the little you’ve said of your first impression.  After all, one has to fall back on that word.  Impression!  What I mean is that something indescribable which is likely to mark a ‘not ordinary’ person.”

I perceived that she was not listening.  There was no mistaking her expression; and once more I had the sense of being out of it—­not because of my age, which at any rate could draw inferences—­but altogether out of it, on another plane whence I could only watch her from afar.  And so ceasing to speak I watched her stepping out by my side.

“No,” she exclaimed suddenly, “I could not have been disappointed with a man of such strong feeling.”

“Aha!  Strong feeling,” I muttered, thinking to myself censoriously:  like this, at once, all in a moment!

“What did you say?” inquired Miss Haldin innocently.