“You could never have looked in the glass if you weren’t.  Didn’t you see, or guess, that I was talking about an Ideal whom I had conjured into being, as a desirable companion in that garden?  I can’t understand from the way the conversation ran, how you could have helped it.  When I first went to the battlement garden I was several years younger, steeped with the spirit of Provence and full of thoughts of Nicolete.  I was just sentimental enough to imagine that such a girl as Nicolete was with me there, and always afterward I associated the vision of the Ideal with that garden.  I said to myself, that I should like to come there again with that Ideal in the flesh.  And then—­then I did come again—­with you.”

“But you said—­you thought of her always—­that because you couldn’t have her—­or something of the sort—­”

“Well, all that was no surprise to you, was it?  You must have known perfectly well—­ever since that night at Avignon when you let your hair down, anyhow, if not before, that I was trying desperately hard not to be an idiot about you—­and not exactly radiant with joy in the thought that whoever the man was who would get you, it couldn’t be I?”

“O-oh!” I breathed a long, heavenly breath, that seemed to let all the sorrows and worries pour out of my heart, as the air rushed out of my lungs.  “O-oh, you can’t mean, truly and really, that you’re in love with Me, can you?”

“Surely it isn’t news to you.”

“I should think it was!” I exclaimed, rapturously.  “Oh, I’m so happy!”

“Another scalp—­though a humble one?”

“Don’t be a beast.  I’m so horribly in love with you, you know.  It’s been hurting so dreadfully.”

Then I rather think he said “My darling!” but I’m not quite sure, for I was so busy falling into his arms, and he was holding me so very, very tightly.

We stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything, and not even thinking, but feeling—­feeling.  And the couriers’ dining-room was a princess’s boudoir in an enchanted palace.  The grease spots were stars and moons that had rolled out of heaven to see how two poor mortals looked when they were perfectly happy.  Just a poor chauffeur and a motor maid:  but the world was theirs.

CHAPTER XXXII

After a while we talked again, and explained all the cross-purposes to each other, with the most interesting pauses in between the explanations.  And Jack told me about himself, and Miss Paget.

It seems that her only sister was his mother, and she had been in love with his father before he met the sister.  The father’s name was Claud, and Jack was named after him.  It was Miss Paget’s favourite name, because of the man she had loved.  But the first Claud wasn’t very lucky.  He lost all his own money and most of his wife’s, and died in South America, where he’d gone in the hope of making more.  Then the wife, Jack’s