spirit diffused in the general?  Who could say?  That dog was getting his legs muddy!  And he moved towards the coppice.  There had been the most delightful lot of bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered like little patches of sky fallen in between the trees, away out of the sun.  He passed the cow-houses and the hen-houses there installed, and pursued a path into the thick of the saplings, making for one of the bluebell plots.  Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered a low growl.  Old Jolyon stirred him with his foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where there was no room to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of his woolly back.  Whether from the growl and the look of the dog’s stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old Jolyon also felt something move along his spine.  And then the path turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting.  Her face was turned away, and he had just time to think:  ’She’s trespassing—­I must have a board put up!’ before she turned.  Powers above!  The face he had seen at the opera—­the very woman he had just been thinking of!  In that confused moment he saw things blurred, as if a spirit—­queer effect—­the slant of sunlight perhaps on her violet-grey frock!  And then she rose and stood smiling, her head a little to one side.  Old Jolyon thought:  ‘How pretty she is!’ She did not speak, neither did he; and he realized why with a certain admiration.  She was here no doubt because of some memory, and did not mean to try and get out of it by vulgar explanation.

“Don’t let that dog touch your frock,” he said; “he’s got wet feet.  Come here, you!”

But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand down and stroked his head.  Old Jolyon said quickly: 

“I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn’t notice me.”

“Oh, yes!  I did.”

He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added:  ’Do you think one could miss seeing you?’

“They’re all in Spain,” he remarked abruptly.  “I’m alone; I drove up for the opera.  The Ravogli’s good.  Have you seen the cow-houses?”

In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like emotion he moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and she moved beside him.  Her figure swayed faintly, like the best kind of French figures; her dress, too, was a sort of French grey.  He noticed two or three silver threads in her amber-coloured hair, strange hair with those dark eyes of hers, and that creamy-pale face.  A sudden sidelong look from the velvety brown eyes disturbed him.  It seemed to come from deep and far, from another world almost, or at all events from some one not living very much in this.  And he said mechanically: 

“Where are you living now?”

“I have a little flat in Chelsea.”

He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear anything; but the perverse word came out: