Antony was working in his front garden. It was a Saturday afternoon, and a blazingly hot one. Every now and then he paused to lean on his spade, and look out to where the blue sea lay shining and glistening in the sunlight.

It was amazingly blue, almost as blue as the sea depicted on the posters of famous seaside resorts, posters in which a bare-legged child with a bucket and spade, and the widest of wide smiles is invariably seen in the foreground. Certainly the designers of these posters are not students of child nature. If they were, they would know that a really absorbed and happy child is almost portentously solemn. It hasn’t the time to waste on smiles; the building of sand castles and fortresses is infinitely too engrossing an occupation. A smile will greet the anticipation; it is lost in the stupendous joy of the fact. But as smiles are evidently considered de rigueur by the designers of posters, and as the mere anticipation will not allow of the portrayal of the Rickett’s blue sea, destined to hit the eye of the beholder, smiles and sea have—rightly or wrongly—to be combined.

Antony gazed at the sea, if not quite as blue as a poster sea, yet—as already stated—amazingly blue. Josephus lay on a bit of hot earth watching him, his nose between his forepaws, and quite exhausted after a mad and wholly objectless ten minutes’ race round the garden.

Antony turned from his contemplation of the sea, and once more grasped his spade. Presently he turned up a small flat round object, which at first sight he took to be a penny. He picked it up, and rubbed the dirt off it. It proved to be merely a small lead disk, utterly useless and valueless; he didn’t even know what it could have been used for. He threw it on the earth again, and went on with his digging. But it, or his action of tossing it on to the earth, had started a train of thought. It is extraordinary what trifles will serve to start a lengthy and connected train of thought. Sometimes it is quite interesting, arriving at a certain point, to trace one’s imaginings backwards, and see from whence they started.

The disk reminded Antony of the coppers he had tossed to the child at Teneriffe. From it he quite unconsciously found himself reviewing all the subsequent happenings. They linked on one to the other without a break. He hardly knew he was reviewing them, though they so absorbed his mind that he was totally unconscious of his surroundings, and even of the fact that he was digging. His employment had become quite mechanical.

He was so engrossed that he did not hear a step in the road behind him. Josephus heard it, however, and gave vent to a faint whine, raising his head from between his paws. The sound roused Antony, and he turned.

His face went suddenly white beneath its bronze. The Duchessa di Donatello was standing at the gate, looking over into the garden.

“Might I come in and rest a moment?” she asked. “The sun is so hot.”

Antony could hardly believe his ears. Surely he could not have heard aright? But there she was, standing at the gate, most evidently waiting his permission to enter.

He left his spade sticking in the earth, and went to unfasten the gate. Without speaking, he led the way up the little flagged path, and into the parlour.

The Duchessa crossed to the oak settle and sat down. Slowly she began to pull off her long crinkly doe-skin gloves. Antony watched her. He saw the gleam of a diamond ring on her hand. It was a ring he had often noticed. A picture of the Duchessa sitting at a little round table among orange trees in green tubs flashed suddenly and very vividly into his mind.

“It is very hot,” said the Duchessa looking up at him.

“Yes,” said Antony mechanically.

“Am I interrupting your work?” asked the Duchessa.

Antony started.

“Oh, no,” he replied. And he sat down by the table, leaning slightly forward with his arms upon it.

“Do you mind my coming here?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Antony reflectively.

A gleam of a smile flashed across the Duchessa’s face. The reply was so Antonian.

There was quite a long silence. Suddenly Antony roused himself.

“You’ll let me get you some tea, Madam,” he said.

Awaiting no reply, he went into the little scullery, where the fire by which he had cooked his midday meal was still alight. The kettle filled with water and placed on the stove, he stood by it, in a measure wishful, yet oddly reluctant to return to the parlour. Reluctance won the day. He remained by the kettle, gazing at it.

Left alone, the Duchessa looked round the parlour. It was exceedingly primitive, yet, to her mind, curiously interesting. Of course in reality it was not unlike dozens of other cottage parlours, but it held a personality of its own for her. It was the room where Antony Gray lived.

She pictured him at his lonely meals, sitting at the table where he had sat a moment or so agone; sitting on the settle where she was now sitting, certainly smoking, and possibly reading. She found herself wondering what he thought about. Did he ever think of the Fort Salisbury, she wondered? Or had he blotted it from his mind, as she had endeavoured—ineffectually—to do? And then, with that thought, with the possibility that he had done so, her presence in the room seemed quite suddenly an intrusion. What on earth would he think of her for coming? And what on earth did she mean to say to him now she had come?

The impulse which had led her down the lane, which had caused her to pause at the gate and speak to him, all at once seemed to her perfectly idiotic, and, worse still, intrusive and impertinent. What possible excuse was she going to give for it, in the face of her behaviour to him that afternoon on the moorland? Merely to have asked for shelter on account of the heat, appeared to her now as the flimsiest of excuses, and would appear to him as an excuse simply to pry upon him, to see his mode of living. He had not returned to the parlour. Doubtless his absence was a silent rebuke to her. She had thrust the necessity of hospitality upon him, but he intended to show her plainly that it was entirely of necessity he had offered it.

Her cheeks burned at the thought. She looked quickly round. Anyhow there was still time for flight. She picked up her gloves from where she had laid them on the settle, and got to her feet.

“The water won’t be long in boiling, Madam,” said Antony’s voice.

He had come back quietly into the room. For a moment he glanced in half surprise to see the Duchessa standing by the settle. Then he crossed to the dresser, and began taking down a cup, a saucer, and a plate.

The Duchessa sat down again, drawing her hand nervously along her gloves.

She looked at him getting down the things and setting them on the table. She watched his neat, deft movements. Antony took no notice of her; she might have been part of the settle itself for all the attention he paid her. His preparations made, he returned momentarily to the scullery to fill the teapot. Coming back with it he placed it on the table.

“Everything is ready, Madam,” he said. Dale himself could not have been more distantly respectful.

The Duchessa looked at the one cup, the one saucer, and the one plate.

“Aren’t you going to have some tea, too?” she asked.

“Servants do not sit down with their superiors,” said Antony.

The colour rose hotly in the Duchessa’s face.

“Why do you say that?” she demanded.

Antony lifted his shoulders, the merest suspicion of a shrug.

“I merely state a fact,” he replied.

“I wish you to,” she said quickly.

“Is that a command?” asked Antony.

“If you like to take it so,” she replied.

Antony turned to the dresser. He took down another cup and plate and put them on the table. Then he stood by it, waiting for her to be seated.

“Sugar?” asked the Duchessa. She was making a brave endeavour to steady the trembling of her voice.

“If you please, Madam,” said Antony gravely.

The meal proceeded in dead silence.

“Mr. Gray,” said the Duchessa suddenly.

“My name,” said Antony respectfully, “is Michael Field.”

The Duchessa gave a little shaky laugh.

“Well, Michael Field,” she said. “I was not very kind that day I met you on the moorland.”

Antony kept his eyes fixed on his plate.

“There was no reason that you should be kind,” he replied quietly.

“There was,” flashed the Duchessa.

“I think not,” replied Antony, calmly. “Ladies in your position are under no obligation to be kind to servants, except to those of their own household. Even then, it is more or less of a condescension on their part.”

“You were not always a servant,” said the Duchessa.

There was the fraction of a pause.

“I did not happen to be actually in a situation when I was on the Fort Salisbury, if that is what you mean, Madam,” returned Antony.

“I mean more than that,” retorted the Duchessa. “I mean that by your up-bringing you are not a servant.”

Antony laughed shortly.

“I happen to have had a better education than falls to the lot of most men who have been in the positions I have been in, and who are in positions like my present one. But most assuredly I am a servant.”

“What positions have you been in?” demanded the Duchessa.

A very faint smile showed itself on Antony’s face.

“I have been a sort of miner’s boy,” he replied slowly. “I have been a farm hand, mainly used for cleaning out pigsties, and that kind of work. I have been servant in a gambling saloon; odd man on a cattle boat. I have worked on a farm again. And now I am an under-gardener. Very assuredly I have been, and am, a servant.”

The Duchessa’s brows wrinkled. “Yet you speak like a gentleman, and—and you wore dress clothes as if you were used to them.”

Again a faint smile showed itself on Antony’s face.

“I told you I happen to have had a decent education in my youth. Also, I would suggest, that even butlers and waiters wear dress clothes as if they were used to them.”

Once more there was a silence. A rather long silence this time. It was broken by the Duchessa’s voice.

“Some months ago,” she said, “I offered my friendship to Antony Gray; I now offer that same friendship to Michael Field.”

Antony gave a little laugh. There was an odd gleam in his eyes.

“Michael Field regrets that he must decline the honour.”

The Duchessa’s face went dead white.

Antony got to his feet.

“Please don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “I fully appreciate the honour you have done me, but—” he shrugged his shoulders—“it is quite impossible to accept it. It—you must see that for yourself—would be a rather ridiculous situation. The Duchessa di Donatello and a friendship with an under-gardener! I don’t fancy either of us would care to be made a mock of, even by the extremely small world in which we happen to live.” He stopped.

The Duchessa rose too. Her eyes were steely.

“Thank you for reminding me,” she said. “In a moment of absurd impulsiveness I had overlooked that fact. Also, thank you for—for your hospitality.”

She moved to the door without looking at him. Antony was before her, and had it open. He followed her down the path and unfastened the wicket gate. She passed through it without turning her head, and walked rather deliberately down the lane.

Antony went back into the cottage. For a moment he stood looking at the table, his throat contracted. Then slowly, and with oddly unseeing eyes, he began clearing away the dÉbris of the meal.