Their greeting, too, was conventional enough, and he turned and walked with her up the lane, and halted before the lilacs.  “You have Mrs. Forsythe’s house,” he said.  “How well I remember it!  My mother used to bring me here years ago.”

“Won’t you come in?” asked Honora, gently.

He seemed to have forgotten her as they mounted in silence to the porch, and she watched him with curious feelings as he gazed about him, and peered through the windows into the drawing-room.

“It’s just as it was,” he said.  “Even the furniture.  I’m glad you haven’t moved it.  They used to sit over there in the corner, and have tea on the ebony table.  And it was always dark-just as it is now.  I can see them.  They wore dresses with wide skirts and flounces, and queer low collars and bonnets.  And they talked in subdued voices—­unlike so many women in these days.”

She was a little surprised, and moved, by the genuine feeling with which he spoke.

“I was most fortunate to get the house,” she answered.  “And I have grown to love it.  Sometimes it seems as though I had always lived here.”

“Then you don’t envy that,” he said, flinging his hand towards an opening in the shrubbery which revealed a glimpse of one of the pilasters of the palace across the way.  The instinct of tradition which had been the cause of Mrs. Forsythe’s departure was in him, too.  He, likewise, seemed to belong to the little house as he took one of the wicker chairs.

“Not,” said Honora, “when I can have this.”

She was dressed in white, her background of lilac leaves.  Seated on the railing, with the tip of one toe resting on the porch, she smiled down at him from under the shadows of her wide hat.

“I didn’t think you would,” he declared.  “This place seems to suit you, as I imagined you.  I have thought of you often since we first met last winter.”

“Yes,” she replied hastily, “I am very happy here.  Mrs. Shorter tells me you are staying with then.”

“When I saw you again last night,” he continued, ignoring her attempt to divert the stream from his channel, I had a vivid impression as of having just left you.  Have you ever felt that way about people?”

“Yes,” she admitted, and poked the toe of her boot with her parasol.

“And then I find you in this house, which has so many associations for me.  Harmoniously here,” he added, “if you know what I mean.  Not a newcomer, but some one who must always have been logically expected.”

She glanced at him quickly, with parted lips.  It was she who had done most of the talking at Mrs. Grainger’s dinner; and the imaginative quality of mind he was now revealing was unlooked for.  She was surprised not to find it out of character.  It is a little difficult to know what she expected of him, since she did not know herself the methods, perhaps; of the Viking in Longfellow’s poem.  She was aware, at least, that she had attracted him, and she was beginning to realize it was not a thing that could be done lightly.  This gave her a little flutter of fear.