As the last scrap of paper drifted to earth he stretched out his arms,
drawing a great breath of relief. His tea, brought to him at the same time
as the letter he had just destroyed, still stood untasted on a rustic table
beside him. He poured some out and drank it thirstily; his mouth felt dry.
Then, setting down the cup, he descended from the veranda and made his way
quickly through the hotel garden to the dusty white road beyond its gates.

It was very hot. The afternoon sun still flamed in the vividly blue Italian
sky, and against the shimmer of azure and gold the tall, dark poplars
ranked beside the road struck a sombre note of relief. But the man himself
seemed unconscious of the heat. He covered the ground with the lithe,
long-limbed stride of youth and supple muscles, and presently swung aside
into a garden where, betwixt the spread arms of chestnut and linden and
almond tree, gleamed the pink-stuccoed walls of a half-hidden villa.

Skirting the villa, he went on unhesitatingly, as one to whom the way
was very familiar, following a straight, formal path which led between
parterres of flowers, ablaze with colour. Then, through an archway dripping
jessamine, he emerged into a small, enclosed garden--an inner sanctuary
of flower-encircled greensward, fragrant with the scent of mignonette and
roses, while the headier perfume of heliotrope and oleander hung like
incense on the sun-warmed air.

A fountain plashed in the centre of the velvet lawn, an iridescent mist of
spray upflung from its marble basin, and at the farther end a stone bench
stood sheltered beneath the leafy shade of a tree.

A woman was sitting on the bench. She was quite young--not more than twenty
at the outside--and there was something in the dark, slender beauty of her
which seemed to harmonise with the southern scents and colour of the old