She looked up at him.

“But not a breath!” she said.

After a pause she added: 

“Why do you ask such a thing?”

“I heard wind in—­in the tops of trees,” he almost stammered.

“That’s impossible.”

“But I say I did!” he exclaimed, with violence.  “In pine trees.”

“There are no pine trees here,” she said, in her husky voice.  “Sit down and have your coffee.”

He obeyed her and sat down quickly, and quickly he took the coffee-cup from her.

“Have a little mastika with it,” she said.

And she pushed a tall liqueur-glass full of the colorless liquid towards him.

“Yes,” he said.

As he drank he looked out sideways through the wide opening in the pavilion.  There was not a breath of wind.

“I can’t understand why I heard the noise of wind in pine trees,” he forced himself to say.

“Seemed to hear it,” she corrected him.  “Perhaps you were thinking of it.”

“But I wasn’t!”

A jeweled gleam from the lamp fell upon one side of her face.  She moved, and the light dropped away from her.

“What were you thinking of?” she asked.

“Of the future.”

“Ah!”

“That’s why it is inexplicable.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t let us talk about it any more,” he said, in an almost terrible voice.  “I must have had an hallucination.”

“Have you ever before thought you were the victim of an hallucination?” she asked.

“Yes.  Several times I have seen the eyes of my little boy.  I saw them a few nights ago in the stream that flows through the Valley of Roses, just after Sir Carey had left me.”

“Don’t look into water again except in daylight.  It is the night that brings fancies with it.  If you gaze very long at anything in a dim light you are sure to see something strange or horrible.”

“But an hallucination of sound!  I must go away from here!  Perhaps in some other place—­”

But she interrupted him inflexibly.

“Going away would be absolutely useless.  A man can’t travel away from himself.”

“But I can’t lead a normal life.  It’s impossible.  Those horrible nights on the ’Leyla’——­”

He stopped.  The effort he had made during the trip to Brusa seemed to have exhausted the last remnants of any moral force he had still possessed when he started on that journey.

“I had made up my mind to begin again, to lay hold on some sort of real life,” he continued, after a pause.  “I was determined to face things.  I called at Therapia.  I accepted Lady Ingleton’s invitation.  I’ve done all I can to make a new start.  But it’s no use.  I can’t keep it up.  I haven’t the force for it.  It was hell—­being with happy people.”

“You mean the Ingletons.  Yes, they are very happy.”

“And Vane, who’s just engaged to be married.  I saw her photograph in his cabin.  They were all—­all very kind.  Lady Ingleton did everything to make me feel at ease.  He’s a delightful fellow—­the Ambassador, I mean.  But I simply can’t stand mingling my life with lives that are happy.  So I had better go away and be alone again.”