The veranda of the central building was illuminated from open French windows, save where the black shadows of stripling walls and the fantastic shadows of iron chairs slithered down into a gladiola bed. From the figures that shuffled between the rooms Miss Warren emerged first in glimpses and then sharply when she saw him; as she crossed the threshold her face caught the room’s last light and brought it outside with her. She walked to a rhythm — all that week there had been singing in her ears, summer songs of ardent skies and wild shade, and with his arrival the singing had become so loud she could have joined in with it.

“How do you do, Captain,” she said, unfastening her eyes from his with difficulty, as though they had become entangled. “Shall we sit out here?” She stood still, her glance moving about for a moment. “It’s summer practically.”

A woman had followed her out, a dumpy woman in a shawl, and Nicole presented Dick: “Se?ora —”

Franz excused himself and Dick grouped three chairs together.

“The lovely night,” the Se?ora said.

“Muy bella,” agreed Nicole; then to Dick, “Are you here for a long time?”

“I’m in Zurich for a long time, if that’s what you mean.”

“This is really the first night of real spring,” the Se?ora suggested.

“To stay?”

“At least till July.”

“I’m leaving in June.”

“June is a lovely month here,” the Se?ora commented. “You should stay for June and then leave in July when it gets really too hot.”

“You’re going where?” Dick asked Nicole.

“Somewhere with my sister — somewhere exciting, I hope, because I’ve lost so much time. But perhaps they’ll think I ought to go to a quiet place at first — perhaps Como. Why don’t you come to Como?”

“Ah, Como —” began the Se?ora.

Within the building a trio broke into Suppe’s “Light Cavalry.” Nicole took advantage of this to stand up and the impression of her youth and beauty grew on Dick until it welled up inside him in a compact paroxysm of emotion. She smiled, a moving childish smile that was like all the lost youth in the world.

“The music’s too loud to talk against — suppose we walk around. Buenas noches, Se?ora.”

“G’t night — g’t night.”

They went down two steps to the path — where in a moment a shadow cut across it. She took his arm.

“I have some phonograph records my sister sent me from America,” she said. “Next time you come here I’ll play them for you — I know a place to put the phonograph where no one can hear.”

“That’ll be nice.”

“Do you know ‘Hindustan’?” she asked wistfully. “I’d never heard it before, but I like it. And I’ve got ‘Why Do They Call Them Babies?’ and ‘I’m Glad I Can Make You Cry.’ I suppose you’ve danced to all those tunes in Paris?”

“I haven’t been to Paris.”

Her cream-colored dress, alternately blue or gray as they walked, and her very blonde hair, dazzled Dick — whenever he turned toward her she was smiling a little, her face ............