Involuntarily she blushed, but her glance met his steadily enough.

"Not until one has been ten times round it!" she reminded him.

He laughed his thin, amused laugh; then suddenly he became grave again.

"Don't you feel," he said, "that when we desire a thing very greatly, our own will power may bend circumstances?"

Her eyes faltered, and her gaze moved to the gondolas flitting silently below them.

"I think I have given up desiring things greatly," she said in a low, uneven voice.

Deerehurst's eyelids narrowed.

"Would it be presumptuous to ask why?"

"No. Oh no!"

"But you will not throw light upon my darkness?"