“Since then I have been at Grenoble, making repairs and trying to learn something about agriculture.  I’ve never been as happy in my life.”

“And you’re going back on Friday,” she said.

He glanced at her quickly.  He had detected the note in her speech:  though lightly uttered, it was unmistakably a command.  She tried to soften its effect in her next sentence.

“I can’t express how much I appreciate your telling me this,” she said.  “I’ll confess to you I wished to think that something of that kind had happened.  I wished to believe that—­that you had made this determination alone.  When I met you that night there was something about you I couldn’t account for.  I haven’t been able to account for it until now.”

She paused, confused, fearful that she had gone too far.  A moment later she was sure of it.  A look came into his eyes that frightened her.

“You’ve thought of me?” he said.

“You must know,” she replied, “that you have an unusual personality—­a striking one.  I can go so far as to say that I remembered you when you reappeared at Mrs. Grenfell’s—­” she hesitated.

He rose, and walked to the far end of the tiled pavement of the pergola, and stood for a moment looking out over the sea.  Then he turned to her.

“I either like a person or I don’t,” he said.  “And I tell you frankly I have never met a woman whom I cared for as I do you.  I hope you’re not going to insist upon a probationary period of months before you decide whether you can reciprocate.”

Here indeed was a speech in his other character, and she seemed to see, in a flash, his whole life in it.  There was a touch of boyishness that appealed, a touch of insistent masterfulness that alarmed.  She recalled that Mrs. Shorter had said of him that he had never had to besiege a fortress—­the white flag had always appeared too quickly.  Of course there was the mystery of Mrs. Maitland—­still to be cleared up.  It was plain, at least, that resistance merely made him unmanageable.  She smiled.

“It seems to me,” she said, “that in two days we have become astonishingly intimate.”

“Why shouldn’t we?” he demanded.

But she was not to be led into casuistry.

“I’ve been reading the biography you recommended,” she said.

He continued to look at her a moment, and laughed as he sat down beside her.  Later he walked home with her.  A dinner and bridge followed, and it was after midnight when she returned.  As her maid unfastened her gown she perceived that her pincushion had been replaced by the one she had received at the ball.

“Did you put that there, Mathilde?” she asked.

Mathilde had.  She had seen it on madame’s bureau, and thought madame wished it there.  She would replace the old one at once.

“No,” said Honora, “you may leave it, now.”

“Bien, madame,” said the maid, and glanced at her mistress, who appeared to have fallen into a revery.