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“The mistake is mine, no doubt. It may have been some one else whom he pointed out, and I have blundered. I’m very sorry if I seem to have intruded–“

“What place is this?” the girl asked, without noticing his excuses.

“San Remo,” Lanfear answered. “If you didn’t intend to stop here, your train will be leaving in a moment.”

“I meant to get off, I suppose,” she said. “I don’t believe I’m going any farther.” She leaned back against the bars of the bench, and put up one of her slim arms along the top.

There was something wrong. Lanfear now felt that, in spite of her perfect tranquillity and self-possession; perhaps because of it. He had no business to stay there talking with her, but he had not quite the right to leave her, though practically he had got his dismissal, and apparently she was quite capable of taking care of herself, or could have been so in a country where any woman’s defencelessness was not any man’s advantage. He could not go away without some effort to be of use.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Can I help you in calling a carriage; or looking after your hand-baggage–it will be getting dark–perhaps your maid–“

“My maid!” The girl frowned again, with a measure of the amazement which she showed when he mentioned her father. “I have no maid!”

Lanfear blurted desperately out: “You are alone? You came–you are going to stay here–alone?”

“Quite alone,” she said, with a passivity in which there was no resentment, and no feeling unless it were a certain color of dignity. Almost at the same time, with a glance beside and beyond him, she called out joyfully: “Ah, there you are!” and Lanfear turned, and saw scuffling and heard puffing towards them the short, stout elderly gentleman who had sent him to her. “I knew you would come before long!”

“Well, I thought it was pretty long, myself,” the gentleman said, and then he courteously referred himself to Lanfear. “I’m afraid this gentleman has found it rather long, too; but I couldn’t manage it a moment sooner.”

Lanfear said: “Not at all. I wish I could have been of any use to–“

“My daughter–Miss Gerald, Mr.–“

“Lanfear–Dr. Lanfear,” he said, accepting the introduction; and the girl bowed.

“Oh, doctor, eh?” the father said, with a certain impression. “Going to stop here?”

“A few days,” Lanfear answered, making way for the forward movement which the others began.

“Well, well! I’m very much obliged to you, very much, indeed; and I’m sure my daughter is.”

The girl said, “Oh yes, indeed,” rather indifferently, and then as they passed him, while he stood lifting his hat, she turned radiantly on him. “Thank you, ever so much!” she said, with the gentle voice which he had already thought charming.

The father called back: “I hope we shall meet again. We are going to the Sardegna.”

Lanfear had been going to the Sardegna himself, but while he bowed he now decided upon another hotel.

The mystery, whatever it was, that the brave, little, fat father was carrying off so bluffly, had clearly the morbid quality of unhealth in it, and Lanfear could not give himself freely to a young pleasure in the girl’s dark beauty of eyes and hair, her pale, irregular, piquant face, her slender figure and flowing walk. He was in the presence of something else, something that appealed to his scientific side, to that which was humane more than that which was human in him, and abashed him in the other feeling. Unless she was out of her mind there was no way of accounting for her behavior, except by some caprice which was itself scarcely short of insanity. She must have thought she knew him when he approached, and when she addressed him those first words; but when he had tried to set her right she had not changed; and why had she denied her father, and then hailed him with joy when he came back to her? She had known that she intended to stop at San Remo, but she had not known where she had stopped when she asked what place it was. She was consciously an invalid of some sort, for she spoke of getting well under sunsets like that which had now waned, but what sort of invalid was she?