The great beauty of the Borghese Gardens was at its height at the
end of the day, the nightingales throbbed from the bushes, and the
air was full of the fresh, exquisite scents of the late spring, as
the day grew toward evening and all nature seemed full of beauty
and peace. It can easily be imagined what this drive meant, then,
to a fine, sensitive young woman, whose every instinct of youth
and freedom and life had been crushed into undeveloped nothingness
by years of gray convention in an old-fashioned English cathedral
town.

Stella Rawson forgot that she and this Russian were strangers, and
she talked to him unrestrainedly, showing glimpses of her inner
self that she had not known she possessed. It was certainly
heaven, she thought, this drive, and worth all the Aunt Caroline's
frowns.

Count Roumovski never said a word of love to her: he treated her
with perfect courtesy and infinite respect, but when at last they
were turning back again, he permitted himself once more to gaze
deeply into her eyes, and Stella knew for the first time in her
existence that some silences are more dangerous than words.

"You do not care at all now for the good clergy-man you are
affianced to," he said. "No--do not be angry-I am not asking a
question, I am stating a fact--when lives have been hedged and
controlled and retenu like yours has been, even the feelings lose
character, and you cannot be sure of them--but the day is
approaching when you will see clearly and--feel much."

"I am sure it is getting very late," said Stella Rawson, and with