the wall which led to the _potager_.

It was just ten o'clock, and the gardeners were leaving off work for an
hour; they had earned their rest, for their work begins each summer day
at sunrise. It was therefore through a sweet-smelling, solitary
wilderness that Count Paul guided his companion.

They walked along the narrow paths edged with fragrant herbs till they
came to the extreme end of the kitchen-garden, and then--

"Shall we go into the orangery?" he asked abruptly.

Sylvia nodded. These were the first words he had uttered since his short
"Good morning. I hope, Madame, you are feeling better?"

He stepped aside to allow her to go first into the large,
finely-proportioned building, which was so charming a survival of
eighteenth-century taste. The orangery was cool, fragrant, deserted;
remote indeed from all that Lacville stands for in this ugly, utilitarian
world.

"Won't you sit down?" he said slowly. And then, as if echoing his
companion's thoughts, "It seems a long, long time since we were first
in the orangery, Madame--"

"--When you asked me so earnestly to leave Lacville," said Sylvia, trying
to speak lightly. She sat down on the circular stone seat, and, as he had
done on that remembered morning when they were still strangers, he took
his place at the other end of it.