She stood for a moment, with her hand resting on the lintel, and she surveyed an apparently unexpected audience with contemplative melancholy. If she was not pleased to find them so many, she was, at all events unresentful, and Gregory imagined, from Mrs. Forrester's bright flutter in rising, that resentment from the sun-goddess was a peril to be reckoned with. Smiling, though languidly smiling, she advanced up the room, after her graceful and involuntary pause. White fringes rippled softly round her; a white train trailed behind her; on her breast the silken cloak that she wore over a transparent under-robe was clasped with pearls and silver. She was very lovely, very stately, very simple; but she struck her one hypercritical observer as somewhat prepared; calculated and conscious, as well.

"Thanks, dearest friend," she said to Mrs. Forrester, who, meeting her halfway down the room and taking her hand, asked her solicitously how she did; "I am now a little rested; but it has been a bad night and a busy morning." She spoke with a slightly foreign accent in a voice at once fatigued and sonorous. Her eyes, clear, penetrating and singularly steady, passed over the assembled faces, turned, all of them, towards herself.

She greeted Sir Alliston with a welcoming smile and a lift of the strange crooked eyebrows, and to Miss Scrotton, who, eager and illuminated, was beside her: "Ah, ma chérie," she said, resting her hand affectionately on her shoulder. Mrs. Forrester had her other hand, and, so standing between her two friends, she bowed gravely and graciously to Lady Campion, to Miss Harding, to Mrs. Harding—who, in the stress of this fulfilment had become plum-coloured—and to Gregory Jardine. Then she was seated. Mrs. Forrester poured out her tea, Miss Harding passed her cake and bread-and-butter, Lady Campion bent to her with frank and graceful compliments, Miss Scrotton sat at her feet on a low settle, and Sir Alliston, leaning on the back of her chair, looked down at her with eyes of antique devotion. Gregory was left on the outskirts of the group and his attention was attracted by the face of little Mrs. Harding, who, all unnoticed and unseated, gazed upon Madame Okraska with the intent liquid eye of a pious dog; the wavering, uncertain smile that played upon her lips was like the humble thudding of the dog's tail. Gregory remembered her face now as one of those, rapt and hypnotized, that he had seen on the platform the night before. In the ovation that Madame Okraska had received at the end of the concert he had noticed this same plum-coloured little lady seizing and kissing the great woman's hand. Shy, by temperament, as he saw, to the point of suffering, he felt sure that only the infection of the crowd had carried her to the act of uncharacteristic daring. He watched her now, finding her piteous and absurd.

But someone beside himself was aware of Mrs. Harding. Miss Woodruff approached her, smiling impersonally, with rather the air of a kindly verger at a church. Yes, she seemed to say, she could find a seat for her. She pointed to the one she had risen from. Mrs. Harding, almost tearful in her gratitude, slid into it with the precaution of the reverent sight-seer who fears to disturb a congregation at prayer, and Miss Woodruff, moving away, went to a table and began to turn over the illustrated papers that lay upon it. Her manner, retired and cheerful, had no humility, none of the poor dependent's unobtrusiveness; rather, Gregory felt, it showed a happy pride, as if, a fortunate priestess in the temple, she had opportunities and felicities denied to mere worshippers. She was interested in her papers. She examined the pictures with something of a child's attentive pleasure.

Gregory came up to her and raising her eyes she smiled at him as though, on the basis of last night's encounter, she took him for granted as potentially a friend.

"What are you looking at?" he asked her, as he might have asked a friendly child.

She turned the paper to him. "The Great Wall of China. They are wonderful pictures."

Gregory stood beside her and looked. The photographs were indeed impressive. The sombre landscape, the pallid sky, and, winding as if for ever over hill and valley, the astonishing structure, like an infinite lonely consciousness. "I should like to see that," said Miss Woodruff.

"Well, you travel a great deal, don't you?" said Gregory. "No doubt Madame Okraska will go to China some day."

Miss Woodruff contemplated the desolate wall. "But this is thousands and thousands of miles from the places where concerts could be given; and I do not know that my guardian has ever thought of China; no, it is not probable that she will ever go there. And then, unfortunately, I do not always go with her. I travel a great deal; but I stop at home a great deal, too. My guardian likes best to be called von Marwitz in private life, by those who know her personally," Miss Woodruff added, smiling again as she presented him with the authorized liturgy.

Gregory was slightly taken aback. He couldn't have defined Miss Woodruff's manner as assured, yet it was singularly competent; and no one could have been in less need of benevolent attentions.

"I see," he said. "She looks so much more Polish than German, doesn't she? What do you call home?" he added. "Have you lived much in England?"

"By home I mean Cornwall," said Miss Woodruff, who was evidently used to being asked questions. "My guardian has a house there; but it has not been for long. It used to be in Germany, and then for a little in Italy; she has only had Les Solitudes for four years." She looked across at the group under the chandelier. "There is still room for a chair." Her glance indicated a gap in Madame von Marwitz's circle.

This kindly solicitude amused Gregory very much. She had him on her mind as a sight-seer, as she had had Mrs. Harding; and she was full of sympathy for sight-seers. "Oh—thanks—no," he said, his eyes following hers. "I won't go crowding in."

"She won't mind. She will not even notice;" Miss Woodruff assured him.

"Oh, well, I like to be noticed if I do crowd," Gregory returned smiling.

His slight irony was lost upon her; yet, he was sure of it, she was not dull. Her smile showed him that she congratulated him on an ambitious spirit. "Well, later, then, we will hope," she said. "You would of course rather talk with her. And here is Mr. Drew, so that this chance is gone."

"Who is that singular young man?" Gregory inquired watching with Miss Woodruff the newcomer, who found a place at once in the gap near Madame von Marwitz and was greeted by her with a brighter interest than she had yet shown.

"Mr. Claude Drew?" Miss Woodruff replied with some surprise. "Do you not know? I thought that everybody in London knew him. He is quite a famous writer. He has written poetry and essays. 'Artemis Wedded' is by him—that is poetry; and 'The Bow of Ulysses'—the essay on my guardian comes in that. Oh, he is quite well known."

Mr. Claude Drew was suave and elegant, and his high, stock-like collar and folded satin neck-gear gave him a somewhat recondite appearance. With his dark eyes, pale skin, full, smooth, golden hair, and the vivid red of an advancing Hapsburgian lip, he had the look of a young French dandy drawn by Ingres.

"My guardian is very much interested in him," Miss Woodruff went on. "She believes that he has a great future. She is always interested in promising young men." This, no doubt, was why Miss Woodruff had so kindly encouraged him to take his chances.

"He looks a clever fellow," said Gregory.

"Do you like his face?" Miss Woodruff inquired. Mr. Drew, as if aware of their scrutiny, had turned his eyes upon them for a moment. They were large, jaded eyes, lustrous, yet with the lustre of a surface rather than of depth; dense, velvety and impenetrable.

"Well, no, I don't," said Gregory, genially decisive. "He looks unwholesome, I think."

"Oh! Unwholesome?" Miss Woodruff repeated the word thoughtfully rather than interrogatively. "Yes; perhaps it is that. It is a danger of talented modern young men, isn't it. They are not strong enough to be so intelligent; one must be very strong—in character, I mean—if one is to be so intelligent. Perhaps he is not strong in character. Perhaps that is what one feels. Because I do not like his face, either; and I go greatly by faces."

"So do I," said Gregory. After a moment, in which they both continued to look at Mr. Drew, he went on. "I wondered last night what nationality you belonged to. I had been wondering about you for a long while before you looked round at me."

"You had heard about me?" she asked.

He was pleased to be able to say: "Oh, I wondered about you before I heard."

"People are so often interested in me because of my guardian," said Miss Woodruff; "everything about her interests them. But I am an American—if you were not told; that is to say my father was an American—and my mother was a Norwegian; but though I have never been to America I count myself as an American, and with right, I think," she added. "We always spoke English when I was a child, and I remember so many of my father's friends. Some day I hope I may go to America. Have you been there? Do you know New England? My father came from New England."

"No; I've never been there. I'm very insular and untravelled."

"Are you? It is a pity not to travel, isn't it," Miss Woodruff remarked.

"But you like it here in England?"

"Yes, I like it here, with Mrs. Forrester; and in Cornwall. But here with Mrs. Forrester always seems to me more like the life of Europe. English life, as a rule, is, I think, rather like boxes one inside the other." She was perfectly sweet and undogmatic, but her air of cosmopolitan competence amused Gregory, serenely of opinion, for his part, that English was the only life.

"Well, the great thing is that the boxes should fit comfortably into one another, isn't it," he observed; "and I think that on the whole we've come to fit pretty well in England. And we all come out of our boxes, don't we," he added, pleased with his application of her simile, "for a Madame von Marwitz."

"Yes, I know," said Miss Woodruff, also, evidently, pleased. "That is quite true; you all come out of your boxes for her. But, as a nation, they are not artists, the English, are they? They are kind to the beautiful things; they like to see them; they will take great trouble to see them; but they do not make them. Beauty does not grow here—that is what I mean. It is in its box, too, and it is taken out and passed round from time to time. You do not mind my saying this? You, perhaps, are yourself an artist?"

"Dear me, no; I'm only a lawyer. I'm shut up in the tightest of the boxes," said Gregory.

Miss Woodruff scrutinized him with a smile. "I should not think that of you," she said. "You do not look like an artist, it is true; few of us can be artists; but you do not look shut into a box, either. Beauty, to you, is something real; not a pastime, a fashion; no, I cannot think it. When I saw your face last night I thought: Here is one who cares. One counts those faces on one's fingers—even at a great concert. So many think they care who only want to care. To you art is a serious thing and an artist the greatest thing a country can produce. Is not that so?"

Gregory continued to be amused by what he felt to be Miss Woodruff's naiveté. He was inclined to think that artists, however admirable in their functions, were undesirable in their persons, and the reverent enthusiasm that Miss Woodruff imagined in him was singularly uncharacteristic. He didn't quite know how to tell her so without seeming rude, so he contented himself with confessing that beauty, in his life, was kept, he feared, very much in its box.

They, went on talking, going to an adjacent sofa where Miss Woodruff, while they talked, stroked the deep fur of an immense Persian cat, Hieronimus by name, who established himself between them. Gregory found her very easy to talk to, though they had so few themes in common, and her face he discovered to be even more charming than he had thought it the night before. She was not at all beautiful and he imagined that in her world of artists she would not be particularly appreciated; nor would she be appreciated in his own world of convention—a girl with such a thick waist, such queer clothes, a face so broad, so brown, so abruptly modelled. She was, he felt, a grave and responsible young person, and something in her face suggested that she might have been through a great deal; but she was very cheerful and she laughed with facility at things he said and that she herself said; and when she laughed her eyes nearly closed and the tip of her tongue was caught, with an effect of child-like gaiety, between her teeth. The darkness of her skin made her lips, by contrast, of a pale rose, and her hair, where it grew thickly around her brows and neck, of an almost infantile fairness. Her broad, brown eyebrows lay far apart and her grey eyes were direct, deliberate and limpid.

From where Gregory sat he had Madame von Marwitz in profile and he observed that once or twice, when they laughed, she turned her head and looked at them. Presently she leaned a little to question Mrs. Forrester and then, rather vexed at a sequence, natural but unforeseen, he saw that Mrs. Forrester got up to fetch him.

"Tante has sent for you!" Miss Woodruff exclaimed. "I am so glad."

It really vexed him a little that he should still be supposed to be pining for an introduction; he would so much rather have stayed talking to her. On the sofa she continued to stroke Hieronimus and to keep a congratulatory gaze upon him while he was conducted to a seat beside the great woman.

Madame von Marwitz was very lovely. She was the type of woman with whom, as a boy, he would have fallen desperately in love, seeing her as poetry personified. And she was the type of woman, all indolent and indifferent as she was, who took it for granted that people would fall desperately in love with her. Her long gaze, now, told him that. It seemed to give him time, as it were, to take her in and to arrange with himself how best to adjust himself to a changed life. It was not the glance of a flirt; it held no petty consciousness; it was the gaze of an enchantress aware of her own inevitable power. Gregory met the cold, sweet, melancholy eyes. But as she gazed, as she slowly smiled, he was aware, with a perverse pleasure, that his present seasoned self was completely immune from her magic. He opposed commonplace to enchantment, and in him Madame von Marwitz would find no victim.

"I have never seen you here before, I think," she said. She spoke with a beautiful precision; that of the foreigner perfectly at ease in an alien tongue, yet not loving it sufficiently to take liberties with it.

Gregory said, no, she had never seen him there before.

"Mrs. Forrester is, it seems, a mutual friend," said Madame von Marwitz. "She has known you since boyhood. You have been very fortunate."

Gregory assented.

"She tells me that you are in the law," Madame von Marwitz pursued; "a barrister. I should not have thought that. A diplomat; a soldier, it should have been. Is it not so?"

Gregory had not wanted to be a barrister. It did not please him that Madame von Marwitz should guess so accurately at a disappointment that had made his youth bitter. "I'm a younger son, you see," he said. "And I had to make my living."

When Madame von Marwitz's gaze grew more intent she did not narrow her eyes, but opened them more widely. She opened them more widely now, putting back her head a little. "Ah," she said. "That was hard. That meant suffering. You are caged in a calling you do not care for."

"Oh, no," said Gregory, smiling; "I'm very well off; I'm quite contented."

"Contented?" she raised her crooked eyebrow. "Are you indeed so fortunate?—or so unfortunate?"

To this large question Gregory made no reply, continuing to offer her the non-committal coolness of his smile. He was not liking Madame von Marwitz, and he was becoming aware that if one didn't like her one did not appear to advantage in talking with her. He cast about in his mind for an excuse to get away.

"The law," Madame von Marwitz mused, her eyes dwelling on him. "It is stony; yet with stone one builds. You would not be content, I think, with the journeyman's work of the average lawyer. You shape; you create; you have before you the vision of the strong fortress to be built where the weak may find refuge. You are an architect, not a mason. Only so could you find contentment in your calling."

"I'm afraid that I don't think about it like that," said Gregory. "I should say that the fortress is built already."

There was now a change in her cold sweetness; her smile became a little ambiguous. "You remind me," she said, "that I was speaking in somewhat pretentious similes. I was not asking you what had been done, but what you hoped to do. I was asking—it was that that interested me in you, as it does in all the young men I meet—what was the ideal you brought to your calling."

It was as though, with all her sweetness, she had seen through his critical complacency and were correcting the manners of a conceited boy. Gregory was a good deal taken aback. And it was with a touch of boyish sulkiness that he replied: "I don't think, really, that I can claim ideals."

Definitely, now, the light of mockery shone in her eye. In evading her, in refusing to be drawn within her magic circle, he had aroused an irony that matched his own. She was not the mere phrase-making woman; by no means the mere siren. "How afraid you English are of your ideals," she said. "You live by them, but you will not look at them. I could say to you—as Statius to Virgil in the Purgatorio—that you carry your light behind you so that you light those who follow, but walk yourselves in darkness. You will not claim them; no, and above all, you will not talk about them. Do not be afraid, my young friend; I shall not tamper with your soul." So she spoke, sweetly, deliberately, yet tersely, too, as though to make him feel that she had done all she could for him and that he had proved himself not worth her trouble. Mr. Claude Drew was still on her other hand, carrying on an obviously desultory conversation with Miss Scrotton, and to him Madame von Marwitz turned, saying: "And what is it you wished to tell me of your Carducci? You will send me the proofs? Good. Oh, I shall not be too tired to read what you have written."

Here was a young man, evidently, who was worth her trouble. Gregory sat disposed of and a good deal discomposed, the more so since he had to own that he had opened himself to the rebuff. He rose and moved away, looking about and seeing that Miss Woodruff had left the room; but Mrs. Forrester came to him, her brilliant little face somewhat clouded.

"What is it, my dear Gregory?" she questioned. "She asked to have you brought. Haven't you pleased her?"

Mrs. Forrester, who had known not only himself, but his father in boyhood, was fond of him, but was not disposed to think of him as important. And she expected the unimportant to know, in a sense, their place and to show the important that they did know it. There was a hint, now, of severity, in her countenance.

It would sound, he knew, merely boyish and sulky to say: "She hasn't pleased me." But he couldn't resist: "I wasn't à la hauteur."

Mrs. Forrester, at this, looked at him hard for a moment. She then diagnosed his case as one of bad temper rather than of malice, and could forgive it in one who had failed to interest the great woman and been discarded in consequence; Mercedes, she knew, could discard with decision.

"Well, when you talk to a woman like Madame von Marwitz, you must try to be worthy of your opportunities," she commented, tempering her severity with understanding. "You really had an opportunity. Your face interested her, and your kindness to little Karen. She always likes people who are kind to little Karen."

It was pleasantly open to him now to say: "Little Karen has been kind to me."

"A dear, good child," said Mrs. Forrester. "I am glad that you talked to her. You pleased Mercedes in that."

"She is a delightful girl," said Gregory.

He now took his departure. But he was again to encounter Miss Woodruff. She was in the hall, talking French to a sallow little woman in black, evidently a ladies' maid, who had the oppressed, anxious countenance and bright, melancholy eyes of a monkey.

"Allons," Miss Woodruff was saying in encouraging tones, while she paused on the first step of the stairs, her hand on the banister; "ce n'est pas une cause perdue, Louise; nous arrangerons la chose."

"Ah, Mademoiselle, c'est que Madame ne sera pas contente, pas contente du tout quand elle verra la robe," was Louise's mournful reply as Gregory came up.

"I hoped we might go on with our talk," he said. He still addressed her somewhat as one addresses a friendly child; "I wanted to hear the end of that story about the Hungarian student."

"He died, in Davos, poor boy," said Miss Woodruff, looking down at him from her slightly higher place, while Louise stood by dejectedly. "He wrote to my guardian and we went to him there and she played to him. It made him so happy. We were with him till he died."

"Shall I see you again?" Gregory asked. "Will you be here for any time? Are you staying in London?"

"My guardian goes to America next week—did you not know?—with Miss Scrotton."

"Oh yes, Eleanor told me. And you're not going too? You're not to see America yet?"

"No; not this time. I go to Cornwall."

"You are to be alone with Mrs. Talcott all the winter?"

"You know Mrs. Talcott?" Miss Woodruff exclaimed in pleased astonishment.

"No; I don't know her; Eleanor told me about her, too."

"It is not being alone," said Miss Woodruff. "She and I have a most happy time together. I thought it strange that you should know Mrs. Talcott. I never met anyone who knew her unless they knew my guardian very well."

"And when are you coming back?"

"From Cornwall? I do not know. I am afraid we shall not see each other—oh, for a very long time," said Miss Woodruff. She smiled. She gave him her hand, leaning down to him from behind the banister. Gregory said that he had friends in Cornwall and that he might run down and see them one day—and then he might see her and Les Solitudes, too. And Miss Woodruff said that that would be very nice.

He heard the last words of the colloquy with Louise as his coat was put on in the hall. "Alors il ne faut pas renvoyer la robe, Mademoiselle?"

"Mais non, mais non; nous nous tirerons d'affaire," Miss Woodruff replied, springing gaily up the stairs, her arm, with a sort of dignified familiarity, in which was encouragement and protection, cast round Louise's shoulders.

Gregory walked at a brisk pace from Mrs. Forrester's house in Wilton Crescent to Hyde Park Corner, and from there, through St. James's Park, to Queen Anne's Mansions where he had a flat. He had moved into it from dismal rooms when prosperity had first come to him, five or six years ago, and was much attached to it. It was high up in the large block of buildings and its windows looked over the greys and greens and silvers of the park, the water shining in the midst, and the dim silhouettes of Whitehall rising in stately significance on the evening sky. Gregory went to the balcony and overhung his view contemplatively for a while. The fog had lifted, and all London was alight.

The drawing-room behind him expressed an accepted convention rather than a personal predilection. It was not the room of a young man of conscious tastes. It was solid, cheerful and somewhat naif. There was a great deal of very clean white paint and a great deal of bright wall-paper. There were deep chairs covered with brighter chintz. There were blue and white tiles around the fireplace and heavy, polished brass before. On the tables lay buff and blue reviews and folded evening papers, massive paper-cutters and large silver boxes. Photographs in silver frames also stood there, of female relatives in court dress and of male relatives in uniform. Behind the photographs were pots of growing flowers; and on the walls etchings and engravings after well-known landscapes. It was the room of a young man uninfluenced by Whistler, unaware of Chinese screens and indifferent to the rival claims of Jacobean and Chippendale furniture. It was civilised, not cultivated; and it was thoroughly commonplace.

Gregory thought of himself as the most commonplace of types;—the younger son whose father hadn't been able to do anything for him beyond educating him; the younger son who, after years of uncongenial drudgery had emerged, tough, stringy, professional, his boyish dreams dead and his boyish tastes atrophied; a useful hard-working, clear-sighted member of society. And there was truth in this conception of himself. There was truth, too, in Madame von Marwitz's probe. He had more than the normal English sensitiveness where ideals were concerned and more than the normal English instinct for a protective literalness. He didn't intend that anybody should lay their hand on his heart and tell him of lofty aims that it would have made him feel awkward to look at by himself; his fastidiousness was far from commonplace, and so were his disdains; they made cheap successes and cheap ambitions impossible to him. He would never make a fortune out of the law; yet already he was distinguished among the younger men at the bar. With nothing of the air of a paladin he brought into the courts a flavour of classic calm and courtesy. He was punctiliously fair. He never frightened or bullied or confused. His impartiality could become alarming at times to his own clients, and shady cases passed him by. Everybody respected Gregory Jardine and a good many people disliked him. A few old friends, comrades at Eton and Oxford, were devoted to him and looked upon him, in spite of his reputation for almost merciless common-sense, as still potentially Quixotic. As a boy he had been exceptionally tender-hearted; but now he was hard, or thought himself so. He had no vanity and looked upon his own resolution and dignity as the heritage of all men worth their salt; in consequence he was inclined to theoretic severity towards the worsted. The sensitiveness of youth had steeled itself in irony; he was impatient of delusions and exaltations, and scornful of the shambling, shame-faced motives that moved so many of the people who came under his observation.

Yet, leaning on the iron railing, his gaze softening to a grave, peaceful smile as he looked over the vast, vaporous scene, laced with its moving and motionless lines of light, it was this, and its mysteries, its delicacies, its reticent radiance, that expressed him more truly than the commonplaces of the room behind him, accurately as these symbolized the activities of his life. The boy and youth, emotional and poetic, dreamy if also shrewdly humorous, still survived in a sub-conscious region of his nature, an Atlantis sunken beneath the traffic of the surface; and, when he leaned and gazed, as now, at the lovely evocations of the evening, it was like hearing dimly, from far depths, the bells of the buried city ringing.

He was thinking of nothing as he leaned there, though memories, linked in their associated loveliness, floated across his mind—larch-boughs brushed exquisitely against a frosty sky on a winter morning in Northumberland, when, a boy, with gun and dogs, he had paused on the wooded slopes near his home to look round him; or the little well of chill, clear water that he had found one summer day gushing from a mossy source under a canopy of leaves; or the silver sky, and hills folded in greys and purples, that had surrounded him on a day in late autumn when he had walked for miles in loneliness and, again, had paused to look, receiving the scene ineffaceably, so that certain moods always made it rise before him. And linked by some thread of affinity with these pictures, the face of the young girl he had met that afternoon rose before him. Not as he had just seen her, but as he had seen her, for the first time, the night before at the concert. Her face came back to him with the larch-boughs and the spring of water and the lonely hills, while he looked at London beneath him. She touched and interested him, and appealed to something sub-conscious, as music did. But when he passed from picturing her to thinking about her, about her origin and environment and future, it was with much the same lucid and unmoved insight with which he would have examined some unfortunate creature in the witness-box.

Miss Woodruff seemed to him very unfortunate. For her irregular birth he had contempt and for her haphazard upbringing only pity. He saw no place in a well-ordered society for sculptors who ran away with other men's wives and lived on chestnuts and left their illegitimate children to be picked up at the roadside. He was the type of young man who, theoretically, admitted of and indeed admired all independences in women; practically he preferred them to be sheltered by their male relatives and to read no French novels until they married—if then. Miss Woodruff struck him as at once sheltered and exposed. Her niche under the extended wing of the great woman seemed to him precarious. He saw no real foothold for her in her present milieu. She only entered Mrs. Forrester's orbit, that was evident, as a tiny satellite in attendance on the streaming comet. In the wake of the comet she touched, it was true, larger orbits than the artistic; but it was in this accidental and transitory fashion, and his accurate knowledge of the world saw in the nameless and penniless girl the probable bride of some second-rate artist, some wandering, dishevelled musician, or ill-educated, ill-regulated poet. Girls like that, who had the aristocrat's assurance and simplicity and unconsciousness of worldly lore, without the aristocrat's secure standing in the world, were peculiarly in danger of sinking below the level of their own type.

He went in to dress. He was dining with the Armytages and after thinking of Miss Woodruff it was indeed like passing from memories of larch-woods into the chintzes and metals and potted flowers of the drawing-room to think of Constance Armytage. Yet Gregory thought of her very contentedly while he dressed. She was well-dowered, well-educated, well-bred; an extremely nice and extremely pretty young woman with whom he had danced, dined and boated frequently during her first two seasons. The Armytages had a house at Pangbourne and he spent several week-ends with them every summer. Constance liked him and he liked her. He was not in love with her; but he wondered if he might not be. To get married to somebody like Constance seemed the next step in his sensible career. He could see her established most appropriately in the flat. He could see her beautifully burnished chestnut hair, her pretty profile and bright blue eyes above the tea-table; he could see her at the end of the dinner-table presiding charmingly at a dinner. She would be a charming mother, too; the children, when babies, would wear blue sashes and would grow up doing all the proper things at the proper times, from the French bonne and the German Fräulein to Eton and Oxford and dances and happy marriages. She would continue all the traditions of his outer life, would fulfil it and carry it on peacefully and honourably into the future.

The Armytages lived in a large house in Queen's Gate Gardens. They were not interesting people, but Gregory liked them none the less for that. He approved of the Armytage type—the kind, courageous, intolerant old General who managed to find Gladstone responsible for every misfortune that befell the Empire—blithe, easy-going Lady Armytage, the two sons in the army and the son in the navy and the two unmarried girls, of whom Constance was one and the other still in the school-room. It was a small dinner-party that night; most of the family were there and they had music after it, Constance singing very prettily—she was taking lessons—the last two songs she had learned, one by Widor and one by Tosti.

Yet as he drove home late Gregory was aware that Constance still remained a pleasant possibility to contemplate and that he had come no nearer to being in love with her. It might be easier, he mused, if only she could offer some trivial trick or imperfection, if she had been freckled, say, or had had a stammer, or prominent teeth. He could imagine being married to her so much more easily than being in love with her, and he was a little vexed with himself for his own insusceptibility.

Constance was the last thing that he thought of before going to sleep; yet it was not of her he dreamed. He dreamed, very strangely, of the little cosmopolitan waif whom he had met that afternoon. He was walking down a road in a forest. The sky above was blue, with white clouds heaving above the dark tree-tops, and it was a still, clear day. His mood was the boyish mood of romance and expectancy, touched with a little fear. At a turning of the road he came suddenly upon Karen Woodruff. She was standing at the edge of the forest as if waiting for him, and she held a basket of berries, not wild-strawberry and not bramble, but a fairy-tale fruit that a Hans Andersen heroine might have gathered, and she looked like such a heroine herself, young, and strange, and kind, and wearing the funny little dress of the concert, the white dress with the flat blue bows. She held out the basket to him as he approached, and, smiling at each other in silence, they ate the fruit with its wild, sweet savour. Then, as if he had spoken and she were answering him, she said: "And I love you."

Gregory woke with this. He lay for some moments still half dreaming, with no surprise, conscious only of a peaceful wonder. He had forgotten the dream in the morning; but it returned to him later in the day, and often afterwards. It persisted in his memory like a cluster of unforgettable sensations. The taste of the berries, the scent of the pine-trees, the sweetness of the girl's smile, these things, rather than any significance that they embodied, remained with him like one of the deep impressions of his boyhood.

On the morning that Gregory Jardine had waked from his dream, Madame von Marwitz sat at her writing-table tearing open, with an air of impatient melancholy, note after note and letter after letter, and dropping the envelopes into a waste-paper basket beside her. A cigarette was between her lips; her hair, not dressed, was coiled loosely upon her head; she wore a white silk peignoir bordered with white fur and girdled with a sash of silver tissue. She had just come from her bath and her face, though weary, had the freshness of a prolonged toilet.

The room where she sat, with its grand piano and its deep chairs, its sofa and its capacious writing-table, was accurately adjusted to her needs. It, too, was all in white, carpet, curtains and dimity coverings. Madame von Marwitz laughed at her own vagary; but it had had only once to be clearly expressed, and the greens and pinks that had adorned her sitting-room at Mrs. Forrester's were banished as well as the rose-sprigged toilet set and hangings of the bedroom. "I cannot breathe among colours," she had said. "They seem to press upon me. White is like the air; to live among colours, with all their beauty, is like swimming under the water; I can only do it with comfort for a little while."

Madame von Marwitz looked up presently at a wonderful little clock of gold and enamel that stood before her and then struck, not impatiently, but with an intensification of the air of melancholy, an antique silver bell that stood beside the clock. Louise entered.

"Where is Mademoiselle?" Madame von Marwitz asked, speaking in French. Louise answered that Mademoiselle had gone out to take Victor for his walk, Victor being Madame von Marwitz's St. Bernard who remained in England during his mistress's absences.

"You should have taken Victor yourself, Louise," said Madame von Marwitz, not at all unkindly, but with decisive condemnation. "You know that I like Mademoiselle to help me with my letters in the morning."

Louise, her permanent plaintiveness enhanced, murmured that she had a bad headache and that Mademoiselle had kindly offered to take Victor, had said that she would enjoy taking him.

"Moreover," Madame von Marwitz pursued, as though these excuses were not worthy of reply, "I do not care for Mademoiselle to be out alone in such a fog. You should have known that, too. As for the dress, don't fail to send it back this morning—as you should have done last night."

"Mademoiselle thought we might arrange it to please Madame."

"You should have known better, if Mademoiselle did not. Mademoiselle has very little taste in such matters, as you are well aware. Do my feet now; I think that the nails need a little polishing; but very little; I do not wish you to make them look as though they had been varnished; it is a trick of yours."

Madame von Marwitz then resumed her cigarette and her letters while Louise, fetching files and scissors, powders and polishers, mournfully knelt before her mistress, and, drawing the mule from a beautifully undeformed white foot, began to bring each nail to a state of perfected art. In the midst of this ceremony Karen Woodruff appeared. She led the great dog by a leash and was still wearing her cap and coat.

"I hope I am not late, Tante," she said, speaking in English and going to kiss her guardian's cheek, while Victor stood by, majestically benignant.

"You are late, my Karen, and you had no business to take out Victor at this hour. If you want to walk with him let it be in the afternoon. Aïe! aïe! Louise! what are you doing? Have mercy I beg of you!" Louise had used the file awkwardly. "What is that you have, Karen?" Madame von Marwitz went on. Miss Woodruff held in her hand a large bouquet enveloped in white paper.

"An offering, Tante; they just arrived as I came in. Roses, I think."

"I have already sent half a dozen boxes downstairs for Mrs. Forrester to dispose of in the drawing-room. You will take off your things now, child, and help me, please, with all these weary people. Bon Dieu! do they really imagine that I am going to answer their inept effusions?"

Miss Woodruff had unwrapped a magnificent bunch of pink roses and laid them beside her guardian. "From that good little dark-faced lady of yesterday, Tante."

Madame von Marwitz, pausing meditatively over a note, glanced at them. "The dark-faced lady?"

"Don't you remember? Mrs. Harding. Here is her card. She sat and gazed at you, so devoutly, while you talked to Mr. Drew and Lady Campion. And she looked very poor. It must mean a great deal for her to buy roses in January—un suprême effort," Miss Woodruff quoted, she and her guardian having a host of such playful allusions.

"I see her now," said Madame von Marwitz. "I see her face; congestionnée d'émotion, n'est-ce-pas." She read the card that Karen presented.

"Silly woman. Take them away, child."

"But no, Tante, it is not silly; it is very touching, I think; and you have liked pink roses sometimes. It makes me sorry for that good little lady that you shouldn't even look at her roses."

"No. I see her. Dark red and very foolish. I do not like her or her flowers. They look stupid flowers—thick and pink, like fat, smiling cheeks. Take them away."

"You have read what she says, Tante, here on the back? I call that very pretty."

"I see it. I see it too often. No. Go now, and take your hat off. Good heavens, child, why did you wear that ancient sealskin cap?"

Karen paused at the door, the rejected roses in her arms. "Why, Tante, it was snowing a little; I didn't want to wear my best hat for a morning walk."

"Have you no other hat beside the best?"

"No, Tante. And I like my little cap. You gave it to me—years ago—don't you remember; the first time that we went to Russia together."

"Years ago, indeed, I should imagine from its appearance. Well; it makes no difference; you will soon be leaving town and it will do for Cornwall and Tallie."

When Karen returned, Madame von Marwitz, whose feet were now finished, took her place in an easy chair and said: "Now to work. Leave the accounts for Schultz. I've glanced at some of them this morning and, as usual, I seem to be spending twice as much as I make. How the money runs away I cannot imagine. And Tallie sends me a great batch of bills from Cornwall, bon Dieu!" Bon Dieu was a frequent ejaculation with Madame von Marwitz, often half sighed, and with the stress laid on the first word.

"Never mind, you will soon be making a great deal more money," said Karen.

"It would be more to the point if I could manage to keep a little of what I make. Schultz tells me that my investments in the Chinese railroads are going badly, too. Put aside the bills. We will go through the rest of the letters."

For some time they worked at the pile of correspondence. Karen would open each letter and read the signature; letters from those known to Madame von Marwitz, or from her friends, were handed to her; the letters signed by unknown names Karen read aloud:—begging letters; letters requesting an autograph; letters recommending to the great woman's kindly notice some budding genius, and letters of sheer adulation, listened to, these last, sometimes with a dreamy indifference to the end, interrupted sometimes with a sudden "Assez."

There were a dozen such letters this morning and when Karen read the signature of the last: "Your two little adorers Gladys and Ethel Bocock," Madame von Marwitz remarked: "We need not have that. Put it into the basket."

"But, Tante," Karen protested, looking round at her with a smile, "you must hear it; it is so funny and so nice."

"So stupid I call it, my dear. They should not be encouraged."

"But you must be kind, you will be kind, even to the stupid. See, here are two of your photographs, they ask you to sign them. There is a stamped and addressed envelope to return them in. Such love, Tante! such torrents of love! You must listen."

Madame von Marwitz resigned herself, her eyes fixed absently on the smoke curling from her cigarette as if, in its fluctuating evanescence, she saw a symbol of human folly. Gladys and Ethel lived in Clapham and told her that they came in to all her concerts and sat for hours waiting on the stairs. Their letter ended: "Everyone adores you, but no one can adore you like we do. Oh, would you tell us the colour of your eyes? Gladys thinks deep, dark grey, but I think velvety brown; we talk and talk about it and can't decide. We mustn't take up any more of your precious time.—Your two little adorers, Gladys and Ethel Bocock."

"Bocock," Madame von Marwitz commented. "No one can adore me like they do. Let us hope not. Petites sottes."

"You will sign the photographs, Tante—and you will say, yes, you must—'To my kind little admirers.' Now be merciful."

"Bocock," Madame von Marwitz mused, holding out an indulgent hand for the pen that Karen gave her and allowing the blotter with the photographs upon it to be placed upon her knee. "And they care for music, parbleu! How many of such appreciators are there, do you think, among my adorers? I do this to please you, Karen. It is against my principles to encourage the schwärmerei of schoolgirls. There," she signed quickly across each picture in a large, graceful and illegible hand, adding, with a smile up at Karen,—"To my kind little admirers."

Karen, satisfied, examined the signatures, held them to the fire for a moment to preserve their vivid black in bold relief, and then put them into their envelope, dropping in a small slip of paper upon which she had written: "Her eyes are grey, flecked with black, and are not velvety."

They had now reached the end of the letters.

"A very good, helpful child it is," said Madame von Marwitz. "You are methodical, Karen. You will make a good housewife. That has never been my talent."

"And it is my only one," said Karen.

"Ah, well, no; it is a good, solid little head in other directions, too. And it is no mean musician that the child has become. Yes; there are many well-known artists to whom I would listen less willingly than to my Karen. It is only in the direction of la toilette," Madame von Marwitz smiled with a touch of roguishness, "only in the direction of la toilette that the taste is rather rudimentary as yet. I was very cross last night, hein?"

"It was disappointing not to have pleased you," said Karen, smiling.

"And I was cross. Louise has her souffre-douleur expression this morning to an exasperating degree."

"We thought we were going to make the dress quite right," said Karen. "It seemed very simple to arrange the lace around the shoulders; I stood and Louise draped me; and Louise is clever, you know."

"Not clever enough for that. It was all because with your solicitude about Louise you wanted her to escape a scolding. She took the lace to Mrs. Rolley too late and did not explain as I told her to do. And you did not save her, you see. Put those two letters of Mr. Drew's in the portfolio; so. And now come and sit, there. I want to have a serious talk with you, Karen."

Karen obeyed. Madame von Marwitz sat in her deep chair, the window behind her. The fog had lifted and the pale morning sunlight struck softly on the coils of her hair and fell on the face of the young girl sitting before her. With her grey dress and folded hands and serene gaze Karen looked very like the little convent pensionnaire. Madame von Marwitz scrutinized her thoughtfully for some moments.

"You are—how old is it, Karen?" she said at last.

"I shall be twenty-four in March," said Karen.

"Bon Dieu! I had not realised that it was so much; you are singularly young for your years."

"Am I, Tante? I don't know," Karen reflected, genially. "I often feel, oh far older than the people I talk with."

"Do you, mon enfant. Some children, it is true, are far wiser than their elders. You are a wise child; but you are young, Karen, very young for your years, in appearance, in demeanour, in candour of outlook. Tell me; have you ever contemplated your future? asked yourself about it?"

Karen, looking gravely at her, shook her head. "Hardly at all, Tante. Is that very stupid?"

"Not stupid, perhaps; but, again, very child-like. You live in the present."

"The past was so sad, Tante, and since I have been with you I have been so happy. There has seemed no reason for thinking of anything but the present."

"Well, that is right. It is my wish to have you happy. As far as material things go, too, your future shall be assured; I see to that. But, you are twenty-three years old, Karen; you are a woman, and a child no longer. Do you never dream dreams of un prince charmant; of a home of your own, and children, and a life to build with one who loves you? If I were to die—and one can count on nothing in life—you would be very desolate."

Karen, for some silent moments, looked at her guardian, intently and with a touch of alarm. "No; I don't dream," she said then. "And perhaps that is because you fill my life so, Tante. If someone came who loved me very much and whom I loved, I should of course be glad to marry;—only not if it would take me from you; I mean that I should want to be often with you. And when I look forward at all I always take it for granted that that will come in time—a husband and children, and a home of my own. But there seems no reason to think of it now. I am quite contented as I am."

The kindly melancholy of Madame von Marwitz's gaze continued to fix her. "But I am not contented for you," she observed. "I wish to see you established. Youth passes, all too quickly, and its opportunities pass, too. I should blame myself if our tie were to cut you off from a wider life. Good husbands are by no means picked up on every bush. One cannot take these things for granted. It is of a possible marriage I wish to speak to you this morning, my Karen. We will talk of it quietly." Madame von Marwitz raised herself in her chair to stretch her hand and take from the mantelpiece a letter lying there. "This came this morning, my Karen," she said. "From our good Lise Lippheim."

Frau Lippheim was a warm-hearted, talented, exuberant Jewess who had been a fellow student of Madame von Marwitz's in girlhood. The eagle-flights of genius had always been beyond her, yet her pinions were wide and, unburdened by domestic solicitudes, she might have gone far. As it was, married to a German musician much her inferior, and immersed in the care and support of a huge family, she ranked only as second or third rate. She gave music-lessons in Leipsig and from time to time, playing in a quintet made up of herself, her eldest son and three eldest girls, gave recitals in Germany, France and England. The Lippheim quintet, in its sober way, held a small but dignified position.

Karen had been deposited by her guardian more than once under the Lippheim's overflowing roof in Leipsig, and it was a vision of Frau Lippheim that came to her as her guardian unfolded the letter—of the near-sighted, pale blue eyes, heavy, benignant features, and crinkled, red-brown hair. So very ugly, almost repulsively so; yet so kind, so valiant, so untiring. The thought of her was touching, and affectionate solicitude almost effaced Karen's personal anxiety; for she could not connect Frau Lippheim with any matrimonial project.

Madame von Marwitz, glancing through her letter, looked up from the last sheet. "I have talked with the good Lise more than once, Karen," she said, "about a hope of hers. She first spoke of it some two years ago; but I told her then that I would say nothing to you till you were older. Now, hearing that I am going away, to leave you for so long, she writes of it again. Did you know that Franz was very much attached to you, Karen?" Franz was Frau Lippheim's eldest son.

The vision that now flashed, luridly, for Karen, was that of an immense Germanic face with bright, blinking eyes behind glasses; huge lips; a flattened nose, modelled thickly at the corners, and an enormous laugh that rolled back the lips and revealed suddenly the Semitic element and a boundless energy and kindliness. She had always felt fond of Franz until this moment. Now, amazed, appalled, a violent repulsion went through her. She became pale. "No. I had not guessed that," she said.

Her eyes were averted. Madame von Marwitz glanced at her and vexation clouded her countenance. She knew that flinty, unresponsive look. In moments of deep emotion Karen could almost disconcert her. Her face expressed no hostility; but a sternness, blind and resisting, like that of a rock. At such moments she did not look young.

Madame von Marwitz, after her glance, also averted her eyes, sighing impatiently. "I see that you do not care for the poor boy. He had hoped, with his mother to back him, that he might have some chance of winning you;—though it is not Franz who writes."

She paused; but Karen said nothing. "You know that Franz has talent and is beginning, now, to make money steadily. Lise tells me that. And I would give you a little dot; enough to assure your future, and his. I only speak of the material things because it is part of your childishness never to consider them. Of him I would not have spoken at all, had I not believed that you felt friendship and affection for him. He is so good, so strong, so loyal that I did not think it impossible."

After another silence Karen found something to say. "I have friendship for him. That is quite different."

"Why so, Karen?" Madame von Marwitz inquired. "Since you are not a romantic school-girl, let us speak soberly. Friendship, true friendship, for a man whose tastes are yours, whose pursuits you understand, is the soundest basis upon which to build a marriage."

"No. Only as a friend, a friend not too near, do I feel affection for Franz. It is repulsive to me—the thought of anything else. It makes me hate him," said Karen.

"Tiens!" Madame von Marwitz opened her eyes in genuine surprise. "I could not have imagined such, decisive feeling. I could not have imagined that you despised the good Franz. I need not tell you that I do not agree with you there."

"I do not despise him."

"Ah, there is more than mere negation in your look, your voice, my child. It is pride, wounded pride, that speaks; and it is as if you told me that I had less care for your pride than you had, and thought less of your claims."

"I do not think of my claims."

"You feel them. You feel Franz your inferior."

"I did not think of such things. I thought of his face, near me, and it made me hate him."

Karen continued to look aside with a sombre gaze. And, after examining her for another moment, Madame von Marwitz held out her hand. "Come," she said, "come here, child. I have blundered. I see that I have blundered. Franz shall be sent about his business. Have I hurt you? Do not think of it again."

The girl got up slowly, as if her stress of feeling made her awkward. Stumbling, she knelt down beside her guardian and, taking the hand and holding it against her eyes, she said in a voice heavy with unshed tears: "Am I a burden? Am I an anxiety? Let me go away, then. I can teach. I can teach music and languages. I can do translations, so many things. You have educated me so well. You will always be my dear friend and I shall see you from time to time. But it is as you say, I am a woman now. I would rather go away than have you troubled by me."

Madame von Marwitz's face, as she listened to the heavy voice, that trembled a little over its careful words, darkened. "It is not well what you say, Karen," she replied. "No. You speak to me as you have no right to speak, as though you had a grievance against me. What have I ever done that you should ask me whether you are a burden to me?"

"Only—" said Karen, her voice more noticeably trembling—"only that it seemed to me that I must be in the way if you could think of Franz as a husband for me. I do not know why I feel that. But it hurt me so much that it seemed to me to be true."

"It has always been my joy to care for you," said Madame von Marwitz. "I have always loved you like my own child. I do not admit that to think of Franz as a husband for you was to do you a wrong. I would not listen to an unfitting suitor for my child. It is you who have hurt me—deeply hurt me—by so misunderstanding me." Sorrow and reproach grew in her voice.

"Forgive me," said Karen, who still held the hand before her eyes.

Madame von Marwitz drew her hand gently away and raising Karen's head so that she could look at her, "I forgive you, indeed, Karen," she said. "How could I not forgive you? But, child, do not hurt me so again. Never speak of leaving me again. You must never leave me except to go where a fuller happiness beckons. You do not know how they stabbed—those words of yours. That you could think them, believe them! No, Karen, it was not well. Not only are you dear to me for yourself; there is another bond. You were dear to him. You were beside me in the hour of my supreme agony. You desecrate our sacred memories when you allow small suspicions and fears to enter your thoughts of me. So much has failed me in my life. May I not trust that my child will never fail me?"

Tragic grief gazed from her eyes and Karen's eyes echoed it.

"Forgive me, Tante, I have hurt you. I have been stupid," she spoke almost dully; but Madame von Marwitz was looking into the eyes, deep wells of pain and self-reproach.

"Yes, you have hurt me, ma chérie," she replied, leaning now her cheek against Karen's head. "And it is not loving to forget that when a cup of suffering brims, a drop the more makes it overflow. You are harsh sometimes, Karen, strangely harsh."

"Forgive me," Karen repeated.

Madame von Marwitz put her arms around her, still leaning her head against hers. "With all my heart, my child, with all my heart," she said. "But do not hurt me so again. Do not forget that I live at the edge of a precipice; an inadvertent footstep, and I crash down to the bottom, to lie mangled. Ah, my child, may life never tear you, burn you, freeze you, as it has torn and burned and frozen me. Ah, the memories, the cruel memories!" Great sighs lifted her breast. She murmured, while Karen knelt enfolding her, "His dead face rises before me. The face that we saw, Karen. And I know to the full again my unutterable woe." It was rare with Madame von Marwitz to allude thus explicitly to the tragedy of her life, the ambiguous, the dreadful death of her husband. Karen knelt holding her, pale with the shared memory. They were so for a long time. Then, sighing softly, "Bon Dieu! bon Dieu!" Madame von Marwitz rose and, gently putting the girl aside, she went into her bedroom and closed the door.