I felt moved to make myself heard.
"Did you know La Valliere, too?" I asked impertinently.

Mills only smiled at me. "No. I am not quite so old as that," he
said. "But it's not very difficult to know facts of that kind

about a historicalpersonage. There were some ribald verses made
at the time, and Louis XIV was congratulated on the possession - I

really don't remember how it goes - on the possession of:
". . . de ce bec amoureux

Qui d'une oreille e l'autre va,
Tra le le.

or something of the sort. It needn't be from ear to ear, but it's
a fact that a big mouth is often a sign of a certain generosity of

mind and feeling. Young man, beware of women with small mouths.
Beware of the others, too, of course; but a small mouth is a fatal

sign. Well, the royalist sympathizers can't charge Dona Rita with
any lack of generosity from what I hear. Why should I judge her?

I have known her for, say, six hours altogether. It was enough to
feel the seduction of her native intelligence and of her splendid

physique. And all that was brought home to me so quickly," he
concluded, "because she had what some Frenchman has called the

'terrible gift of familiarity'."
Blunt had been listening moodily. He nodded assent.

"Yes!" Mills' thoughts were still dwelling in the past. "And when
saying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance

between herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect
figure, a change of the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed

by a person born in the purple. Even if she did offer you her hand
- as she did to me - it was as if across a broad river. Trick of

manner or a bit of truth peeping out? Perhaps she's really one of
those inaccessible beings. What do you think, Blunt?"

It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range of
sensitiveness had been increased already) displeased or rather

disturbed me strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But
after a while he turned to me.

"That thick man," he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, "is as
fine as a needle. All these statements about the seduction and

then this final doubt expressed after only two visits which could
not have included more than six hours altogether and this some

three years ago! But it is Henry Allegre that you should ask this
question, Mr. Mills."

"I haven't the secret of raising the dead," answered Mills good
humouredly. "And if I had I would hesitate. It would seem such a

liberty to take with a person one had known so slightly in life."
"And yet Henry Allegre is the only person to ask about her, after

all this uninterrupted companionship of years, ever since he
discovered her; all the time, every breathing moment of it, till,

literally, his very last breath. I don't mean to say she nursed
him. He had his confidential man for that. He couldn't bear women

about his person. But then apparently he couldn't bear this one
out of his sight. She's the only woman who ever sat to him, for he

would never suffer a model inside his house. That's why the 'Girl
in the Hat' and the 'Byzantine Empress' have that family air,

though neither of them is really a likeness of Dona Rita. . . You
know my mother?"

Mills inclined his body slightly and a fugitive smile vanished from
his lips. Blunt's eyes were fastened on the very centre of his

empty plate.
"Then perhaps you know my mother's artistic and literary

associations," Blunt went on in a subtly changed tone. "My mother
has been writing verse since she was a girl of fifteen. She's

still writing verse. She's still fifteen - a spoiled girl of
genius. So she requested one of her poet friends - no less than

Versoy himself - to arrange for a visit to Henry Allegre's house.
At first he thought he hadn't heard aright. You must know that for

my mother a man that doesn't jump out of his skin for any woman's
caprice is not chivalrous. But perhaps you do know? . . ."

Mills shook his head with an amused air. Blunt, who had raised his
eyes from his plate to look at him, started afresh with great

deliberation.
"She gives no peace to herself or her friends. My mother's

exquisitely absurd. You understand that all these painters, poets,
art collectors (and dealers in bric-e-brac, he interjected through

his teeth) of my mother are not in my way; but Versoy lives more
like a man of the world. One day I met him at the fencing school.

He was furious. He asked me to tell my mother that this was the
last effort of his chivalry. The jobs she gave him to do were too

difficult. But I daresay he had been pleased enough to show the
influence he had in that quarter. He knew my mother would tell the

world's wife all about it. He's a spiteful, gingery little wretch.
The top of his head shines like a billiard ball. I believe he

polishes it every morning with a cloth. Of course they didn't get
further than the big drawing-room on the first floor, an enormous

drawing-room with three pairs of columns in the middle. The double
doors on the top of the staircase had been thrown wide open, as if

for a visit from royalty. You can picture to yourself my mother,
with her white hair done in some 18th century fashion and her

sparkling black eyes, penetrating into those splendours attended by
a sort of bald-headed, vexed squirrel - and Henry Allegre coming

forward to meet them like a severeprince with the face of a
tombstone Crusader, big white hands, muffled silken voice, half-

shut eyes, as if looking down at them from a balcony. You remember
that trick of his, Mills?"

Mills emitted an enormous cloud of smoke out of his distended
cheeks.

"I daresay he was furious, too," Blunt continued dispassionately.
"But he was extremely civil. He showed her all the 'treasures' in

the room, ivories, enamels, miniatures, all sorts of monstrosities
from Japan, from India, from Timbuctoo . . . for all I know. . . He

pushed his condescension so far as to have the 'Girl in the Hat'
brought down into the drawing-room - half length, unframed. They

put her on a chair for my mother to look at. The 'Byzantine
Empress' was already there, hung on the end wall - full length,

gold frame weighing half a ton. My mother first overwhelms the
'Master' with thanks, and then absorbs herself in the adoration of

the 'Girl in the Hat.' Then she sighs out: 'It should be called
Diaphaneite, if there is such a word. Ah! This is the last

expression of modernity!' She puts up suddenly her face-e-main and
looks towards the end wall. 'And that - Byzantium itself! Who was

she, this sullen and beautiful Empress?'
"'The one I had in my mind was Theodosia!' Allegre consented to

answer. 'Originally a slave girl - from somewhere.'
"My mother can be marvellously indiscreet when the whim takes her.

She finds nothing better to do than to ask the 'Master' why he took
his inspiration for those two faces from the same model. No doubt

she was proud of her discerning eye. It was really clever of her.
Allegre, however, looked on it as a colossal impertinence; but he

answered in his silkiest tones:
"'Perhaps it is because I saw in that woman something of the women

of all time.'
"My mother might have guessed that she was on thin ice there. She

is extremelyintelligent. Moreover, she ought to have known. But
women can be miraculously dense sometimes. So she exclaims, 'Then

she is a wonder!' And with some notion of being complimentary goes
on to say that only the eyes of the discoverer of so many wonders

of art could have discovered something so marvellous in life. I
suppose Allegre lost his temperaltogether then; or perhaps he only