It was true that she came upon the Count in one of the paths of the Kleine Rugen. He was walking slowly toward her, his eyes fixed thoughtfully upon the ground. When she accosted him, he was plainly confused, as she had said. After the first few passages in polite though stilted conversation, his keen, grey eyes resumed their thoughtful—it was even a calculating look.
"Will you sit here with me for a while, Miss Guile?" he asked gently. "I have something of the gravest importance to say to you."
She sat beside him on the sequestered bench, and when she arose to leave him an hour later, her cheek was warm with colour and her eyes were filled with tenderness toward this grim, staunch old man who was the friend of her friend. She laid her hand in his and suffered him to raise it to his lips.
"I hope, my dear young lady," said he with simple directness, "that you will not regard me as a stupid, interfering old meddler. God is my witness, I have your best interests at heart. You are too good and beautiful to—"
"I shall always look upon you as the kindest of men!" she cried impulsively, and left him.
He stood watching her slender, graceful figure as she moved down the sloping path and turned into the broad avenue. A smallish man with a lean face came up from the opposite direction and stopped beside him.
"Could you resist her, Quinnox, if you were twenty-two?" asked this man in his quiet voice.
Quinnox did not look around, but shook his head slowly. "I cannot resist her at sixty-two, my friend. She is adorable."
"I do not blame him. It is fate. She is fate. Our work is done, my friend. We have served our country well, but fate has taken the matter out of our hands. There is nothing left for us to do but to fold our arms and wait." Gourou revealed his inscrutable smile as he pulled at his thin, scraggly moustache. He was shaking his head, as one who resigns himself to the inevitable.
After a long silence Quinnox spoke.