“I hope you will come again,” she said.

He bowed low over her hand.  “If I can ever serve you in any way,” he said, “I hope you will give me the privilege.  Farewell, most estimable Romeo!  You may yet live to greet me as a friend.”

He was gone with the words with the suddenness of a monkey swinging off a bough, leaving behind him a silence so marked that the fall of an unripe apple from the tree immediately above them caused Columbus to start and jump from his perch to investigate.

Then Juliet, very quiet of mien and level of brow, got up and went to Dick who had risen at the departure of the visitor.  She put her hand through his arm and held it closely.

“You are not to be unkind to my friends, Richard,” she said.  “It is the one thing I can’t allow.”

He looked at her with some sternness, but his free hand closed at once upon hers.  “I hate to think of you on terms of intimacy with that bounder,” he said.

She smiled a little.  “I know you do.  But you are prejudiced.  I can’t give up an old friend—­even for you, Dick.”

He squeezed her hand.  “Have you got many friends like that, Juliet?”

She flushed.  “No.  He is the only one I have, and—­”

“And?” he said, as she stopped.

She laid her cheek with a very loving gesture against his shoulder.  “Ah, don’t throw stones!” she pleaded gently.  “There are so few of us without sin.”

His arm was about her in a moment, all his hardness vanished.  “My own girl!” he said.

She held his hand in both her own.  “Do you know—­sometimes—­I lie awake at night and wonder—­and wonder—­whether you would have thought of me—­if you had known me in the old days?”

“Is that it?” he said very tenderly.  “And you thought I was sleeping like a hog and didn’t know?”

She laughed rather tremulously, her face turned from him.  “It isn’t always possible to bury the past, is it, however hard we try?  I hope you’ll make allowances for that, Dick, if ever I shock your sense of propriety.”

“I shall make allowances,” he said, “because you are the one and only woman I worship—­or have ever worshipped—­and I can’t see you in any other light.”

“How dear of you, Dicky!” she murmured.  “And how rash!”

“Am I such an unutterable prig?” he said.  “I feel myself that I have got extra fastidious since knowing you.”

She laughed at that, and after a moment turned with impulsive sweetness and put her cigarette between his lips.  “You’re not a prig, darling.  You are just an honourable and upright gentleman whom I am very proud to belong to and with whom I always feel I have got to be on my best behaviour.  What have you been doing all this time?  I should have come to look for you if Saltash hadn’t turned up.”

Dick’s brows were slightly drawn.  “I’ve been talking to Jack,” he said.

“Jack!” She opened her eyes.  “Dick!  I hope you haven’t been quarrelling!”