Returning from their gallop, Miss Erroll had very little to say.  Selwyn, too, was silent and absent-minded.  The girl glanced furtively at him from time to time, not at all enlightened.  Man, naturally, was to her an unknown quantity.  In fact she had no reason to suspect him of being anything more intricate than the platitudinous dance or dinner partner in black and white, or any frock-coated entity in the afternoon, or any flannelled individual at the nets or on the links or cantering about the veranda of club, casino, or cottage, in evident anxiety to be considerate and agreeable.

This one, however, appeared to have individual peculiarities; he differed from his brother Caucasians, who should all resemble one another to any normal girl.  For one thing he was subject to illogical moods—­apparently not caring whether she noticed them or not.  For another, he permitted himself the liberty of long and unreasonable silences whenever he pleased.  This she had accepted unquestioningly in the early days when she was a little in awe of him, when the discrepancy of their ages and experiences had not been dissipated by her first presumptuous laughter at his expense.

Now it puzzled her, appearing as a specific trait differentiating him from Man in the abstract.

He had another trick, too, of retiring within himself, even when smiling at her sallies or banteringly evading her challenge to a duel of wits.  At such times he no longer looked very young; she had noticed that more than once.  He looked old, and ill-tempered.

Perhaps some sorrow—­the actuality being vague in her mind; perhaps some hidden suffering—­but she learned that he had never been wounded in battle and had never even had measles.

The sudden sullen pallor, the capricious fits of silent reserve, the smiling aloofness, she never attributed to the real source.  How could she?  The Incomprehensible Thing was a Finality accomplished according to law.  And the woman concerned was now another man’s wife.  Which conclusively proved that there could be no regret arising from the Incomprehensible Finality, and that nobody involved cared, much less suffered.  Hence that was certainly not the cause of any erratic or specific phenomena exhibited by this sample of man who differed, as she had noticed, somewhat from the rank and file of his neutral-tinted brothers.

“It’s this particular specimen, per se,” she concluded; “it’s himself, sui generis—­just as I happen to have red hair.  That is all.”

And she rode on quite happily, content, confident of his interest and kindness.  For she had never forgotten his warm response to her when she stood on the threshold of her first real dinner party, in her first real dinner gown—­a trivial incident, trivial words!  But they had meant more to her than any man specimen could understand—­including the man who had uttered them; and the violets, which she found later with his card, must remain for her ever after the delicately fragrant symbol of all he had done for her in a solitude, the completeness of which she herself was only vaguely beginning to realise.