The orange trees which flourish in the Square of the Constitution, the band, the dragging of feet, the sky, the houses, lemon and rose coloured—­all this became so significant to Mrs. Wentworth Williams after her second cup of coffee that she began dramatizing the story of the noble and impulsive Englishwoman who had offered a seat in her carriage to the old American lady at Mycenae (Mrs. Duggan)—­not altogether a false story, though it said nothing of Evan, standing first on one foot, then on the other, waiting for the women to stop chattering.

“I am putting the life of Father Damien into verse,” Mrs. Duggan had said, for she had lost everything—­everything in the world, husband and child and everything, but faith remained.

Sandra, floating from the particular to the universal, lay back in a trance.

The flight of time which hurries us so tragically along; the eternal drudge and drone, now bursting into fiery flame like those brief balls of yellow among green leaves (she was looking at orange trees); kisses on lips that are to die; the world turning, turning in mazes of heat and sound—­though to be sure there is the quiet evening with its lovely pallor, “For I am sensitive to every side of it,” Sandra thought, “and Mrs. Duggan will write to me for ever, and I shall answer her letters.”  Now the royal band marching by with the national flag stirred wider rings of emotion, and life became something that the courageous mount and ride out to sea on—­the hair blown back (so she envisaged it, and the breeze stirred slightly among the orange trees) and she herself was emerging from silver spray—­when she saw Jacob.  He was standing in the Square with a book under his arm looking vacantly about him.  That he was heavily built and might become stout in time was a fact.

But she suspected him of being a mere bumpkin.

“There is that young man,” she said, peevishly, throwing away her cigarette, “that Mr. Flanders.”

“Where?” said Evan.  “I don’t see him.”

“Oh, walking away—­behind the trees now.  No, you can’t see him.  But we are sure to run into him,” which, of course, they did.

But how far was he a mere bumpkin?  How far was Jacob Flanders at the age of twenty-six a stupid fellow?  It is no use trying to sum people up.  One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.  Some, it is true, take ineffaceable impressions of character at once.  Others dally, loiter, and get blown this way and that.  Kind old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character.  A cat will always go to a good man, they say; but then, Mrs. Whitehorn, Jacob’s landlady, loathed cats.