He went up the steps under the cypress-trees that led from terrace to
terrace, pausing at each landing-place to look out over the wonderful
sea that was changing every moment with the changing glow of the sunset.
Yes, it was certainly a place for dreams. Even old Larpent felt the
charm--Larpent who had fallen in love twenty years ago for the first and
last time!

An irrepressible chuckle escaped him. Funny old Larpent! The wine of the
gods had evidently been too strong a brew for him. It was obvious that he
had no desire to repeat the dose.

At his last halting-place he stood longer to drink in the beauty of the
evening before entering the hotel. The sea had the pearly tint shot with
rose of the inside of an oyster-shell. The sky-line was receding, fading
into an immense calm. The shadows were beginning to gather. The sun had
dipped out of sight.

The tinkle of a lute rose from one of the hidden gardens below him. He
stood and listened with sentimental eyes and quizzically twitching mouth.
Everything in this wonder-world was ultra-sweet to-night. And yet--and
yet--

Suddenly another sound broke through the stillness, and in a moment he
had sprung to alertness. It was a cry--a sharp, wrung cry from the garden
close to him, the garden of the hotel, and instantly following it a flood
of angry speech in a man's voice and the sound of blows.

"Damnation!" said Saltash, and sprang for a narrow wooden door in the
stone wall a few yards higher up.