That was how she put it--how she must put it, of course. He perfectly
understood her.

And now here he was, sitting in the C.P.R. Hotel at Winnipeg, at a time
of year when he was generally in Paris or Rome, investigating the latest
Greek acquisitions of the Louvre, or the last excavation in the Forum;
picnicking in the Campagna; making expeditions to Assisi or Subiaco; and
in the evenings frequenting the drawing-rooms of ministers and
ambassadors.

He looked up presently from the _Times_, and at the street outside; the
new and raw street, with its large commercial buildings of the American
type, its tramcars and crowded sidewalks. The muddy roadway, the gaps
and irregularities in the street façade, the windows of a great store
opposite, displeased his eye. The whole scene seemed to him to have no
atmosphere. As far as he was concerned, it said nothing, it
touched nothing.

What was it he was to be taken to see? Emigration offices? He resigned
himself, with a smile. The prospect made him all the more pleasantly
conscious that one feeling, and one feeling only, could possibly have
brought him here.

"Ah! there you are."

A light figure hurried toward him, and he rose in haste.

But Lady Merton was intercepted midway by a tall man, quite unknown to
Delaine.