Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/287

Rh 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.

"Well?" he said, looking at her fixedly. "Well, you see I came back after all!"

Sylvia made no answer.

"I ought not to have done so. It was weak of me." He did not look at her as he spoke; he was tracing imaginary patterns on the stone floor.

"I came back," he concluded, in a low, bitter tone, "because I could not stay any longer away from you."

And still Sylvia remained silent.