what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups
in such a place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment,
he discovered the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago,
and he went himself with a rather hurried apology. He left with a
sense of champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards
explain. In the wild events which were to follow this girl had no
part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over.
And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a
motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the
glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark
and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed was so
improbable, that it might well have been a dream.

When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the
moment empty. Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence
was rather a living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the
door stood a street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree
that bent out over the fence behind him. About a foot from the
lamp-post stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the
lamp-post itself. The tall hat and long frock coat were black; the
face, in an abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of
fiery hair against the light, and also something aggressive in the
attitude, proclaimed that it was the poet Gregory. He had something
of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword in hand for his foe.

He made a sort of doubtful salute, which Syme somewhat more
formally returned.

"I was waiting for you," said Gregory. "Might I have a moment's
conversation?"