itself had sent him. In my distress I thought I could never
sufficiently repay. . . Well, I have been paying ever since."

"What do you mean?" asked Mills softly. "In hard cash?"
"Oh, it's really so little," she said. "I told you it wasn't the

worst case. I stayed on in that house from which I nearly ran away
in my nightgown. I stayed on because I didn't know what to do

next. He vanished as he had come on the track of something else, I
suppose. You know he really has got to get his living some way or

other. But don't think I was deserted. On the contrary. People
were coming and going, all sorts of people that Henry Allegre used

to know - or had refused to know. I had a sensation of plotting
and intriguing around me, all the time. I was feeling morally

bruised, sore all over, when, one day, Don Rafael de Villarel sent
in his card. A grandee. I didn't know him, but, as you are aware,

there was hardly a personality of mark or position that hasn't been
talked about in the Pavilion before me. Of him I had only heard

that he was a very austere and pious person, always at Mass, and
that sort of thing. I saw a frail little man with a long, yellow

face and sunken fanatical eyes, an Inquisitor, an unfrocked monk.
One missed a rosary from his thin fingers. He gazed at me terribly

and I couldn't imagine what he might want. I waited for him to
pull out a crucifix and sentence me to the stake there and then.

But no; he dropped his eyes and in a cold, righteous sort of voice
informed me that he had called on behalf of the prince - he called

him His Majesty. I was amazed by the change. I wondered now why
he didn't slip his hands into the sleeves of his coat, you know, as

begging Friars do when they come for a subscription. He explained
that the Prince asked for permission to call and offer me his

condolences in person. We had seen a lot of him our last two
months in Paris that year. Henry Allegre had taken a fancy to

paint his portrait. He used to ride with us nearly every morning.
Almost without thinking I said I should be pleased. Don Rafael was

shocked at my want of formality, but bowed to me in silence, very
much as a monk bows, from the waist. If he had only crossed his

hands flat on his chest it would have been perfect. Then, I don't
know why, something moved me to make him a deep curtsy as he backed

out of the room, leaving me suddenly impressed, not only with him
but with myself too. I had my door closed to everybody else that

afternoon and the Prince came with a very proper sorrowful face,
but five minutes after he got into the room he was laughing as

usual, made the whole little house ring with it. You know his big,
irresistible laugh. . . ."

"No," said Mills, a little abruptly, "I have never seen him."
"No," she said, surprised, "and yet you . . . "

"I understand," interrupted Mills. "All this is purely accidental.
You must know that I am a solitary man of books but with a secret

taste for adventure which somehow came out; surprising even me."
She listened with that enigmatic, still, under the eyelids glance,

and a friendly turn of the head.
"I know you for a frank and loyal gentleman. . . Adventure - and

books? Ah, the books! Haven't I turned stacks of them over!
Haven't I? . . ."

"Yes," murmured Mills. "That's what one does."
She put out her hand and laid it lightly on Mills' sleeve.

"Listen, I don't need to justify myself, but if I had known a
single woman in the world, if I had only had the opportunity to

observe a single one of them, I would have been perhaps on my
guard. But you know I hadn't. The only woman I had anything to do

with was myself, and they say that one can't know oneself. It
never entered my head to be on my guard against his warmth and his

terrible obviousness. You and he were the only two, infinitely
different, people, who didn't approach me as if I had been a

precious object in a collection, an ivory carving or a piece of
Chinese porcelain. That's why I have kept you in my memory so

well. Oh! you were not obvious! As to him - I soon learned to
regret I was not some object, some beautiful, carved object of bone

or bronze; a rare piece of porcelain, pate dure, not pate tendre.
A pretty specimen."

"Rare, yes. Even unique," said Mills, looking at her steadily with
a smile. "But don't try to depreciate yourself. You were never

pretty. You are not pretty. You are worse."
Her narrow eyes had a mischievous gleam. "Do you find such sayings

in your books?" she asked.
"As a matter of fact I have," said Mills, with a little laugh,

"found this one in a book. It was a woman who said that of
herself. A woman far from common, who died some few years ago.

She was an actress. A great artist."
"A great! . . . Lucky person! She had that refuge, that garment,

while I stand here with nothing to protect me from evil fame; a
naked temperament for any wind to blow upon. Yes, greatness in art

is a protection. I wonder if there would have been anything in me
if I had tried? But Henry Allegre would never let me try. He told

me that whatever I could achieve would never be good enough for
what I was. The perfection of flattery! Was it that he thought I

had not talent of any sort? It's possible. He would know. I've
had the idea since that he was jealous. He wasn't jealous of

mankind any more than he was afraid of thieves for his collection;
but he may have been jealous of what he could see in me, of some

passion that could be aroused. But if so he never repented. I
shall never forget his last words. He saw me standing beside his

bed, defenceless, symbolic and forlorn, and all he found to say
was, 'Well, I am like that.'

I forgot myself in watching her. I had never seen anybody speak
with less play of facial muscles. In the fullness of its life her

face preserved a sort of immobility. The words seemed to form
themselves, fiery or pathetic, in the air, outside her lips. Their

design was hardly disturbed; a design of sweetness, gravity, and
force as if born from the inspiration of some artist; for I had

never seen anything to come up to it in nature before or since.
All this was part of the enchantment she cast over me; and I seemed

to notice that Mills had the aspect of a man under a spell. If he
too was a captive then I had no reason to feel ashamed of my

surrender.
"And you know," she began again abruptly, "that I have been

accustomed to all the forms of respect."
"That's true," murmured Mills, as if involuntarily.

"Well, yes," she reaffirmed. "My instinct may have told me that my
only protection was obscurity, but I didn't know how and where to

find it. Oh, yes, I had that instinct . . . But there were other
instincts and . . . How am I to tell you? I didn't know how to be

on guard against myself, either. Not a soul to speak to, or to get
a warning from. Some woman soul that would have known, in which

perhaps I could have seen my own reflection. I assure you the only
woman that ever addressed me directly, and that was in writing, was

. . . "
She glanced aside, saw Mr. Blunt returning from the ball and added

rapidly in a lowered voice,
"His mother."

The bright, mechanical smile of Mr. Blunt gleamed at us right down
the room, but he didn't, as it were, follow it in his body. He

swerved to the nearest of the two big fireplaces and finding some
cigarettes on the mantelpiece remained leaning on his elbow in the

warmth of the bright wood fire. I noticed then a bit of mute play.
The heiress of Henry Allegre, who could secure neither obscurity

nor any other alleviation to that invidious position, looked as if
she would speak to Blunt from a distance; but in a moment the

confident eagerness of her face died out as if killed by a sudden
thought. I didn't know then her shrinking from all falsehood and

evasion; her dread of insincerity and disloyalty of every kind.
But even then I felt that at the very last moment her being had

recoiled before some shadow of a suspicion. And it occurred to me,
too, to wonder what sort of business Mr. Blunt could have had to

transact with our odiousvisitor, of a nature so urgent as to make
him run out after him into the hall? Unless to beat him a little

with one of the sticks that were to be found there? White hair so