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Instantly Basil cast behind him all that had taken place. She was a child, he told himself. Nothing but an impulsive, as yet immature creature, charming and wayward, whom he loved with a great love. What mattered a little cloud in a sky hitherto so pure? Surely he had been in the wrong to take the affair so seriously. He would have done much better to laugh it away, and thus did he begin to laugh and pet her, a change of front which she submitted to with seraphic patience, especially as he promised her—to commemorate their first little dispute—a wonderful bracelet of uncut sapphires she had admired that very morning in the rue de la Paix. What will you? Children must have toys and bonbons to console them when they cry.

A little later, when he had rung for her women, Basil went to his study. It was dark, save for the fire-glow, and he did not trouble to turn on the lights, but stood a long time at a window overlooking the garden behind the house. It had been freezing very hard for Paris—this particular winter being of unusual severity. Every tree, every branch, gleamed in crystal purity. The lawn, which earlier had been powdered with snow, glittered like a carpet of diamonds, and the hundred ramifications of a leafless aristolochia on the end wall made a twinkling lace-like tracery, interspersed here and there with broad frost-roses and ice-flowers against the dark stone. Above this fairy spot the sky was sown with stars, only a little paled by the cold radiance of the full moon.