“I am sure it is getting very late,” said Stella Rawson, and with difficulty she turned her eyes away and looked over the green world.

Count Roumovski laughed softly, as if to himself.  And they were silent until they came to the entrance gates again, when the chauffeur stopped and shut the car.

“We have at least snatched some moments of pleasure, have we not?” the owner whispered, “and we have hurt no one.  Will you trust me again when I propose something which sounds to you wild?”

“Perhaps I will,” Stella murmured rather low.

“When I was hunting lions in Africa I learned to keep my intelligence awake,” he said calmly, “it is an advantage to me now in civilization—­nothing is impossible if one only keeps cool.  If one becomes agitated one instantly connects oneself with all other currents of agitation, and one can no longer act with prudence or sense.”

“I think I have always been very foolish,” admitted Stella, looking down.  “I seem to see everything differently now.”

“What we are all striving after is happiness,” Count Roumovski said.  “Only we will not admit it, and nearly always spoil our own chances by drifting, and allowing outside things to influence us.  If you could see the vast plains of snow in my country and the deep forests—­with never a human being for miles and miles, you would understand how nature grows to talk to one—­and how small the littlenesses of the world appear.”  Then they were silent again, and it was not until they were rushing up the Via Nazionale and in a moment or two would have reached their destination, that Count Roumovski said: 

“Stella—­that means star—­it is a beautiful name—­I can believe you could be a star to shine upon any man’s dark night—­because you have a pure spirit, although it has been muffled by circumstances for all these years.”

Then the automobile drew up by the trees, at perhaps two hundred yards from the hotel, near the baths of Diocletian.

“If you will get out here, it will be best,” Count Roumovski told her respectfully, “and walk along on the inner side.  I will then drive to the door of the hotel, as usual.”

“Thank you, and good-bye,” said Stella, and began untying the veil—­he helped her at once, and in doing so his hand touched her soft pink cheek.  She thrilled with a new kind of mad enjoyment, the like of which she had never felt, and then controlled herself and stamped it out.

“It has been a very great pleasure to me,” he said, and nothing more; no “good-bye” or “au revoir” or anything, and he drew into the far corner as she got out of the car, letting the chauffeur help her.  Nor did he look her way as he drove on.  And Stella walked leisurely back to the hotel, wondering in her heart at the meaning of things.

No one noticed her entrance, and she was able to begin to dress for dinner without even Martha being aware that she had been absent.  But as she descended in the lift with her uncle and aunt it seemed as if the whole world and life itself were changed since the same time the night before.