“What is that?”

“What is it?—­why, it is the mummy hyacinth which you declared that we should never see blossom in this world.  It has budded; whether or not it will blossom, who can say?”

“It is an omen,” he said, with a little laugh; and for the first time that evening their eyes met.

“Come into the garden, and you can smoke on the museum verandah; it is pleasant there these hot nights.”

“It is dangerous, your garden.”

She laughed softly.  “You have proved yourself superior to danger.”

Then they passed out together.  The evening was still and very sultry.  Not a breath stirred the silence of the night.  The magnolia, the moon-flower, and a thousand other blooms poured out their fragrance upon the surrounding air, where it lay in rich patches, like perfume thrown on water.  A thin mist veiled the sea, and the little wavelets struck with a sorrowful sound against the rock below.

“Tell me all about it, Arthur.”

She had settled herself upon a long low chair, and as she leant back the starlight glanced white upon her arms and bosom.

“There is not much to tell.  It is a common story—­at least, I believe so.  She threw me over, and the day before I should have married her, married another man.”

“Well?”

“Well, I saw her the morning following her marriage.  I do not remember what I said, but I believe I spoke what was in my mind.  She fainted, and I left her.”

“Ah, you spoke harshly, perhaps.”

“Spoke harshly!  Now that I have had time to think of it, I wish that I could have had ten imaginations to shape my thoughts, and ten tongues to speak them with!  Do you understand what this woman has done?  She has sold herself to a brute—­oh, Mildred, such a brute—­she has deserted me for a man who is not even a gentleman.”

“Perhaps she was forced into it.”

“Forced!—­nonsense; we are not in the Middle Ages.  A good woman should have been forced to drown herself before she consented to commit such a sacrilege against herself as to marry a man she hated.  But she, ’my love, my dove, my undefiled’—­she whom I thought whiter than the snow —­she could do this, and do it deliberately.  I had rather have seen her dead, and myself dead with her.”

“Don’t you take a rather exaggerated view, Arthur?  Don’t you think, perhaps, that some of the fault lies with you for overrating women?  Believe me, so far as my experience goes, and I have seen a good many, the majority of them do not possess the exalted purity of mind you and many very young men attribute to them.  They are, on the contrary, for the most part quite ready to exercise a wise discretion in the matter of marriage, even when the feeble tendencies which represent their affections point another way.  A little pressure goes a long way with them; they are always glad to make the most of it; it is the dust they throw up to hide their retreat.  Your Angela,