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 ignored it. 'You might break your leg, you know. You might meet a robber.—Well, ''au revoir. ' ''

'I have nothing to be robbed of, as you see.' The old lady opened her arms and displayed her ancient attire. 'I am a scarecrow. And if a dead scarecrow is found one day on a mountain-path—well, I should prefer that, to tell the truth, to holy water and holy oil and all the lugubrious paraphernalia of a deathbed.'

'I agree with you! I should too,' said Graham. Their dark eyes dwelt on each other for a moment. Something passed between them. He did not think he liked the old lady, but a smouldering ember of recklessness, ruthlessness, perhaps, looked out at him from her eyes and his own dark fires answered it. 'Don't die in the mountain-path till we meet again,' he said.

It was comical, pitiful, he reflected, after she had left him, to remember how the Second Empire glance had answered this final sally: a glance arch, triumphant. He had delighted her; enraptured her. Poor old creature. She was ravenously lonely.