However, the stars were working for him.  That afternoon, coming home from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the gate of the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of the village.  Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, he could do no less than open the gate for her; and as their ways must thence lie together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the castle, it would be an awkward affectation not to speak.  And yet (he ground his teeth at having to admit it) his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from emotion, he told himself,—­from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous excitement:  what was there in the woman that should excite a sane man like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and betray him.  But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few seconds.  The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it afterwards, gave it time to pass.  So that now, as they set forwards towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, and to observe, with impressiveness, that it was a fine day.

She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and unembarrassed; and at this, in quite the most unembarrassed manner, smiling again,—­perhaps with just the faintest, just the gentlest shade of irony, and with just the slightest quizzical upward tremor of the eyebrows,—­“Isn’t it a day rather typical of the land and season?” she inquired.

It was the first step that had cost.  John’s assurance was coming swiftly back.  Her own air of perfect ease in the circumstances very likely accelerated it.  “Yes,” he answered her.  “But surely that isn’t a reason for begrudging it a word of praise?”

By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute.

“No,” she admitted.  “You are right.  The day deserves the best we can say of it.”

“Her voice,” thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had struck him in a book he had lately read, “her voice is like ivory and white velvet.”  And the touch, never so light, of a foreign accent with which she spoke, rendered her English piquant and pretty,—­gave to each syllable a crisp little clean-cut outline.  They sauntered on for a minute or two in silence, with half the width of the road-way between them, the shaded road-way, where the earth showed purple through a thin green veil of mosses, and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and there, turned purple and green to red and gold.  The warm air, woven of garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely subtile fabric.  And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps and thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead.  A fine day indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they could say.  His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, his assurance had come completely back; and with it had come a curious deep satisfaction, a feeling