A week had gone by since then in one long effort to be with her and appear to others as though he did not greatly wish to be; two concerts, two walks with her alone, when all that he had said seemed as nothing said, and all her sayings but ghosts of what he wished to hear; a week of confusion, day and night, until, a few minutes ago, her handkerchief had fallen from her glove on to the dusty road, and he had picked it up and put it to his lips.  Nothing could take away the look she had given him then.  Nothing could ever again separate her from him utterly.  She had confessed in it to the same sweet, fearful trouble that he himself was feeling.  She had not spoken, but he had seen her lips part, her breast rise and fall.  And he had not spoken.  What was the use of words?

He felt in the pocket of his coat.  There, against his fingers, was that wisp of lawn and lace, soft, yet somehow alive; and stealthily he took it out.  The whole of her, with her fragrance, seemed pressed to his face in the touch of that lawn border, roughened by little white stars.  More secretly than ever he put it back; and for the first time looked round.  These people!  They belonged to a world that he had left.  They gave him the same feeling that her uncle and aunt had given him just now, when they said good-night, following her into their hotel.  That good Colonel, that good Mrs. Ercott!  The very concretion of the world he had been brought up in, of the English point of view; symbolic figures of health, reason, and the straight path, on which at that moment, seemingly, he had turned his back.  The Colonel’s profile, ruddy through its tan, with grey moustache guiltless of any wax, his cheery, high-pitched:  “Good-night, young Lennan!” His wife’s curly smile, her flat, cosy, confidential voice—­how strange and remote they had suddenly become!  And all these people here, chattering, drinking—­how queer and far away!  Or was it just that he was queer and remote to them?

And getting up from his table, he passed the fiddlers with the dark-white skins, out into the Place.

II

He went up the side streets to the back of her hotel, and stood by the railings of the garden—­one of those hotel gardens which exist but to figure in advertisements, with its few arid palms, its paths staring white between them, and a fringe of dusty lilacs and mimosas.

And there came to him the oddest feeling—­that he had been there before, peering through blossoms at those staring paths and shuttered windows.  A scent of wood-smoke was abroad, and some dry plant rustled ever so faintly in what little wind was stirring.  What was there of memory in this night, this garden?  Some dark sweet thing, invisible, to feel whose presence was at once ecstasy, and the irritation of a thirst that will not be quenched.

And he walked on.  Houses, houses!  At last he was away from them, alone on the high road, beyond the limits of Monaco.  And walking thus through the night he had thoughts that he imagined no one had ever had before him.  The knowledge that she loved him had made everything seem very sacred and responsible.  Whatever he did, he must not harm her.  Women were so helpless!