’I did not see Mr. D’Arcy until the afternoon after the guests had left, for in order to avoid seeing him and them, I took a long stroll by the river and then got into the punt.  I had scarcely done so when Sinfi appeared on the bank and hailed me.  I took her into the punt.  She was so entirely herself that I found it difficult to believe in the startling spectacle of the previous evening, although her expression was careworn, and she certainly looked a little paler than she used to look when she and I and Rhona Boswell were such great friends; her splendid beauty and bearing were as striking as ever, I thought.  I was expecting every minute that she would say something about what occurred under the elm tree in the home close.  But she did not allude to it, and therefore I did not.  We spent the entire afternoon in reminiscences of Carnarvonshire.  When she told me that she knew you and that you had been there together, and when she told me the cause of your being there, and told me of your search for me, and all the distress that came to you on my account, my longing to see you was like a fever.

’But vivid as were the pictures that Sinfi gave me of your search for me, I could not piece them together in a plain tale.  I tried to do so; it was impossible.  What had happened to me after I had become unconscious on the sands in that unaccountable way—­why I was found in Wales—­how I could possibly have got there without knowing about it—­what had led to my being discovered by Mr. D’Arcy—­discovered in London, above all places, and in a painter’s studio—­these questions were with me night and day, and Sinfi was entirely unable to tell me anything about the matter, unless, as I sometimes half-thought, she was concealing something from me.’

‘How could you have suspicions of poor Sinfi?’ I said, for I was becoming alarmed at the way in which these inquiries were absorbing Winnie’s mind.

’It is, I know, Henry, a peculiarity of my nature to be extremely confiding until I have once been deceived, and then to be just as suspicious.  Kind as Mr. D’Arcy has been to me, I began to feel restless in his haven of refuge.  I think that he perceived it, for I often found his eyes fixed upon me with a somewhat inquiring and anxious expression in them.  I felt that I must leave him and go out into the world and take my place in the battle of life.’

‘But, Winnie,’ I said, ’you don’t say that you intended to come to me.  Battle of life, indeed!  Where should Winnie stand in that battle except by the side of Henry?  You knew now where to find me.  Sinfi, of course, told you that I was in Wales.  And you did not even write to me!  What can it mean?’

’Why, Henry, don’t you know what it means?  Don’t you know that the newspapers were full of long paragraphs about the heir of the Aylwins having left his famous bungalow and gone to Japan?  Why, it was actually copied into the little penny weekly thing that Mrs. Titwing takes in, and it was there that I read it.’