"Tell me about yours?" she insisted.
He sat up abruptly. Her fingers fell upon his arm.
"We will go and sit under my rose tree," she suggested.
They moved back into the winter garden until they came to a seat at its furthest extremity. A fountain was playing a few yards away, and clusters of great pink roses were drooping down from some trellis-work before them.
"Here, at least," she continued, as she leaned back, "we will not be tempted to talk seriously. Tell me about yourself? Do you never look forward into the future? Have you no personal ambitions or hopes?"
He looked steadily ahead of him.
"I am only a very ordinary man," he replied. "Like every one else, sometimes I look up to the clouds."
"Tell me what you see there?" she begged.
He was silent. The sound of voices now came to them like a distant murmur, a background to the slow falling of the water into the fountain basin.
"Lady Elisabeth," he said, "it is not always possible to tell even one's own self what the thoughts mean which come into one's brain."