"My dear Julian," wrote Mrs. Bobby Van Antwerp to Mr. Gerard a week later, "you are, I think, neglecting us shamefully. What has become of you? If you are inclined to perform a charitable action, do come in to tea to-morrow afternoon. You don't generally, I know, patronize such mild functions, but we are to have a little music"—

"A little music?" mused Gerard, knitting his brows and thrusting out his under lip, as the note dropped from his hand. "That means, of course, that young Halleck. It's something new for Eleanor to go in for music. But it's her doing, of course. I suppose she really cares for the fellow. And yet what a pity—what a pity that she should throw herself away like that!" He sat gazing absently before him, his pen in his hand, while the work upon which he had been engaged when Mrs. Bobby's note arrived—an article for a scientific magazine—remained without the finishing touches he had intended to bestow.

He had not seen Elizabeth since that morning in the Park.

He had carefully refrained from going where he might see her. He had denied himself, once for all, that unprofitable and mysterious pleasure of watching her across the ball-room, while he leaned inertly against the wall, or talked, in his weary way, to some woman to whom he felt himself indebted. No, thank Heaven, he had been warned in time; there was no danger of his being made a fool of a second time.

His mind wandered back across the gulf of years, to that other woman whom he had loved so desperately once, whose shadow still stood between him and the happiness which seemed, now and again, within his grasp. He thought of the mad infatuation, the bitter disillusion, the restless travelling to and fro, the final settling down into cynical indifference.... and then long afterwards, when the indifference had grown into a habit, and he dreaded nothing more than to have it disturbed, he had met this girl who had exercised upon him from the first a curious effect, half repellant, half attractive, and wholly baffling and alarming, whose hair he had objected to because it was "too red" and who played the piano with a force and fire and passion, which stirred his heart as he had resolved it should never be stirred again.

Gerard had always intended to marry, but he proposed, in spite of the efforts of Eleanor Van Antwerp and other anxious friends, to take his time about it. He had his ideal of the sort of wife he wanted—a being as different as possible from his first love, and almost as tiresome a compound of all the domestic virtues as that mythical personage whom Hannah More's hero had once gone in search of. But, unlike that estimable individual, he had fallen in love with a woman far removed from his ideal, of doubtful antecedents which he liked no better than Bobby Van Antwerp, of qualities the reverse of domestic, and the type of hair and coloring which he had long illogically, but none the less strongly, associated with a certain lack of moral sense.

Yet though Gerard could not help his feelings, he could certainly control his actions, and he was determined to keep away from Elizabeth Van Vorst—more especially now since there seemed to be some unaccountable understanding between her and that young Halleck.

Yet that very fact made him the more anxious to see her, and find out for himself how far his suspicions were justified. "Good Heavens," thought Gerard, getting up and pacing restlessly to and fro "how can she care for a fellow like that—so second-rate, so superficial, such a—such a cad? What is Eleanor thinking of to have him at the house? Some one really ought to give her a hint—not I; but—some one." ...

The end of it all was that he strolled into Mrs. Van Antwerp's drawing-room that afternoon, his usual air of well-bred impassiveness unmoved by the sight of Paul Halleck seated at the piano, and the cynosure of several pairs of admiring feminine eyes.

Elizabeth's eyes were not among them. She was in a back room pouring tea. But Gerard had no sooner assured himself of her being thus harmlessly employed, than his jealous heart suggested that there was something sinister in such apparent indifference.

He wandered into the other room as soon as he decently could. She was seated at the tea-table, for the moment, entirely alone. Seen thus off guard, for she did not at first perceive Gerard, there was something indefinably weary and listless in her attitude. She was paler even than she had been that day at the Portrait Show, and the lines beneath her eyes were not black, but purple. It would have gone ill with her reputation as a beauty had it been put to the vote that afternoon. But it was Gerard's peculiarity, his misfortune perhaps, that she appealed to him most at times when to the world at large she was looking her worst. He stood watching her for a moment. Presently she looked up. She caught sight of him. Instantly the warm, lovely color rushed into her cheeks, only to retreat, and leave her paler than before—but not till he had seen it.

His manner was very gentle as he approached her and asked for a cup of tea. She poured it out mechanically, with a hand that trembled.

"We have not seen you lately," she said, with eyes carefully riveted on the tea-things. "Eleanor was wondering—what had become of you."

"Indeed! It was very kind of her to give me a thought." Gerard stirred his tea absently. "I was busy," he said "with an article I had promised for a magazine."

"Ah! You write a great deal, don't you?" Elizabeth looked up with some interest. "I should like to see some of your articles, if I may."

He smiled. "You don't know what you're asking. You'd find them very dull."

"What, because I'm so dull myself?" she asked, with a flash of spirit.

"I told you once before," he said, in the tone that he had used to her at the studio "that I didn't think you—that."

"Ah, but you think me other things that are—worse."

"As what, for instance?" he asked, smiling.

"Oh frivolous, and vain, and heartless. A lot of horrid things."

"I only said you seemed so."

"Ah, then you think I'm better than I seem?" she asked, flippantly, yet with a swift inward pang.

He seemed to consider. "I think you are very—incomprehensible," he said at last.

She bent down over the tea-things, so that he could not see her face. "Oh, that's only," she said, in a low voice "because you haven't the key to the enigma. If you had it"—She paused. "You might not like the things you understood," she concluded.

Gerard put down his untasted cup. "I'm willing to take the risk," he said, deliberately.

He waited, as if for an answer, but none came. She appeared to busy herself with the tea-things. In the next room Paul Halleck began to sing the Evening Star song. It seemed to Gerard that Elizabeth turned a shade paler than she had been before.

"He has a fine voice," he said, when the song was finished. "Don't you think so?"

She started. "Yes, I—I think so," she said, mechanically.

"I was surprised a little at Eleanor's going in for music," Gerard went on. "It isn't her line, generally."

"No, it isn't her line," Elizabeth repeated, in the same mechanical tones. Suddenly she met his eyes defiantly. "I asked her to have him here," she said.

"Ah, you asked her?" Gerard drew his breath quickly. "I thought he was a—a friend of yours."

"You thought so?" she returned quickly, and then in a low voice, as if she dreaded the answer: "Why?"

"Why?" He repeated her question as if it surprised him. For a moment he seemed to hesitate; then, as if forming a sudden resolution: "I thought so," he said, steadily, and looking her straight in the face "for one thing, because I saw you walking in the Park with him one morning."

"Ah, you—you saw me?" She seemed to gasp for breath. Then, with a quick, impetuous movement, she pushed the tea-things away from her. "And so," she said, turning to him suddenly, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling "you—you put the worst construction upon that, you think more ill of me than ever?"—

He had turned very pale, but still his voice was steady. "I don't know why I should think ill of you, for such a simple thing as that. But if there is any secret about it"—he fixed his eyes upon her coldly, haughtily—"if the meeting was not intended to be known, why I—I'm sorry I should have seen it. Of course I should not mention it—to any one else."

She flushed a little, then grew pale, before the scorn in his eyes. "There is—there is no secret," she said, in a low voice. "You can mention it—to whom you please."

"I confess I was a little surprised," he went on, without heeding her, and this time a note of keen anxiety pierced through the studied quietness of his voice, his gaze softened, as if imploring her to give him the explanation which he had no right to demand. "I was a little taken aback," he said, "because I understood you to say—the day before—that you hardly knew him."

"Yes, I—I remember." She leaned back in her chair, staring before her with hard, bright eyes. "When I told you that," she said, slowly "I—I lied."

It gave him a keen shock to hear her pronounce the word. He did not speak, and she looked up at him presently with a little, deprecating smile. "Now," she said, softly "I've shocked you, haven't I?"

He was silent for a moment. "No," he said, at last "not that; but—I'm sorry. I don't like to think of you as—misstating anything, even if the matter is of no importance."

She had taken up a teaspoon, and was playing with it absently. "I don't know," she said, slowly "why you should care."

"Don't you?" He turned his eyes away. "I wish to Heaven I didn't," he said, low and fiercely. The words were not intended for her, but she heard them and again the warm, beautiful color rushed into her cheeks. An answer trembled on her lips, but she struggled not to say it; struggled against the desire to bring that glow to his face, that light to his eyes, which she knew so well lay dormant, beneath the heavy lids. She knew, ah, she knew. While he stayed away she had her misgivings, but now that she saw him again, she read his heart, even as she had done at the Portrait Show. She had only to be herself, her best self, and she held him captive, he could not escape. Yet, paradoxically, her better instincts urged upon her to show him her worst side, to say the things which hurt and shocked him.

While she hesitated, people came crowding in from the next room. In the confusion that ensued, Gerard was forced away from the table. He fell back against the wall, and watched Elizabeth while, with instinctive self-command, she fulfilled the different demands made upon her. He saw Halleck go up to her gaily, flushed with his success, and bending over her, murmur a few jesting words, which she heard without a smile. Gerard could have killed him for the air of proprietorship which was even more pronounced than at the musicale. But she—how did she like it? He scanned her face eagerly. There was no softness there, no answering gleam of pleasure; rather a dull, dogged look of submission, which seemed to cover, or Gerard deceived himself, an instinctive shrinking, a powerless resentment.

"She doesn't care for him," he thought, with a quick, sharp sense of relief. "And yet—she has to be civil to him, she has to do things to help him. Why, for Heaven's sake, why?" He wandered into the other room, tormenting himself with this question, and found his hostess there.

"What do you think of my new protegÉ?" she asked, detaining him as he took his leave.

"What, Halleck? Oh, he sings very well," he returned, absently.

"I never before posed as a patron of rising musicians," she went on, "but Elizabeth knew him, it seems, in the country, and asked if I would mind helping him a little. She's so fond of music, you know." She spoke quite innocently. Gerard gave her a quick, searching glance. Apparently she suspected nothing. Yet she was a woman of quick perceptions. Perhaps, after all, it was he who was mistaken; his jealous, suspicious nature had led him into unnecessary torture. No wonder she had met his doubt with defiance, had not deigned to justify herself, or to dispel a distrust which he had no right to display. In the sudden, glad, unreasoning reaction, he was ready to heap all manner of insulting epithets upon himself.

"I think your efforts will be repaid," he said, inclined in his relief to be generous. "Halleck has a fine voice. I shouldn't wonder if he were quite a success."

"It was very nice of you to come in," she said. "You have been such a recluse lately. What have you been doing?"

"Oh, the whirl of excitement in which I've been living was too much for me," he declared "and so I've given up society for awhile, and am going in for hard study by way of rest."

"Good gracious! That sounds very impressive," she said. "I'm almost afraid to suggest, under the circumstances, that you should take a seat in our box at the opera to-night. And yet I wish you would, Julian, just by way of doing me a favor, for some people I've asked are not coming, and Bobby is away, and Elizabeth and I will be quite alone."

He smiled. "I don't think there's much chance of your being alone very long," he said. Yet he promised at last to take one of the vacant seats, though he had refused several other invitations for that evening. Mrs. Bobby's eyes sparkled as if she had achieved a victory.

"Julian is coming to-night," she announced to Elizabeth, when the musicale was over and the last guest had departed.

"Is he?" Elizabeth spoke without apparent interest, as she sank, with a weary look, into a chair in front of the fire.

"You are tired. Would you rather not go to-night?"

"Oh, no"—with a languid gesture. "Music doesn't tire me!"

"And yet," said Mrs. Bobby, who had taken the seat opposite her and was watching her thoughtfully, "you didn't seem to care enough about it to come in to listen to your friend this afternoon."

Elizabeth blushed. "I could hear him in the other room," she said.

"Where, besides, you seemed to be very well entertained," said Mrs. Bobby, serenely. "Still, I don't think it was nice of you. It is hard on the poor man, after flirting with him in the country, to treat him so indifferently in town."

"I didn't flirt with him," said Elizabeth, but her protest was faint, and seemed purely perfunctory. In fact, she was not sorry that Mrs. Bobby had adopted this theory, realizing that a half-truth may sometimes be the most effective barrier to a knowledge of the whole.

"Don't tell me anything so wildly improbable, my dear," said Mrs. Bobby. "My knowledge of human nature will not allow me to believe that a pretty girl and a handsome young singer, thrown together for weeks in the country, as I believe you were, did not indulge in a tremendous flirtation. But seriously, Elizabeth, I am glad that it went no further, and that you have recovered so easily. For I can imagine that you lost your heart to him a little. Confess, Elizabeth, didn't you?"

"Perhaps I did," said Elizabeth, staring immovably into the fire "but one gets over such things, you know."

"Indeed one does," said Mrs. Bobby. "I was desperately in love at seventeen, and cried my eyes out when they made me give the man up; and yet had I married him, I should have been the most wretched being in the world, instead of a much happier woman than I deserve to be, thanks to a husband far too good for me. (But that, dear, is between ourselves. I always try to make Bobby think it's the other way.) But imagine how dreadful it would have been, if I had had my own foolish way at seventeen. And so I am glad, Elizabeth, that you have got over your penchant for this young artist, who is good-looking, and sings well, and all that; but who is—even if I knew anything about him, which I don't—quite the last man I should like you to marry."

Elizabeth's face was turned away. "I don't know," she said in a low voice, "why you think of that."

"Oh, I was only speculating on what might have been," said Mrs. Bobby, lightly. "I know," she went on after a moment, stealing a furtive glance at the girl's averted face, "I know the sort of man I should like you to marry, Elizabeth. He must be older than you, considerably older; of a serious disposition, with a strong will, stronger than yours, for you might be perhaps a little hard to manage; fond of music and fond of books; rich, and with a good position of course; and—and I should like him to be every bit as nice as Bobby, if such a thing is possible."

Elizabeth turned her white face towards her friend. "And you think," she said, in a low, stifled voice, "that I should come up to the standard of a paragon like that?"

"My dear," said Mrs. Bobby, wisely, "paragons don't marry other paragons, or the world would be somewhat more dull than it is at present. A man who is very serious should marry a woman who is a trifle frivolous, and in that way they strike the happy medium."

"I don't know," said Elizabeth. "They would be more likely, I should think, to strike a—a discordancy. It would be fatiguing to try to please a man like that. One could never, do what one would, come up to his standard."

"You wouldn't have to," said Mrs. Bobby, softly, "he would think you perfect, if—he loved you."

"Do you think so?" said Elizabeth, with rather a dreary smile. "I think, for my part, that he would be harder to satisfy, he would exact all the more, because—he loved you." She sat pondering the idea for a moment, then with a careless little gesture, she seemed to dismiss the subject as a thing of small consequence. "It's much better not to try to satisfy people like that," she declared. "What a lot of time we are wasting! It must be time to dress." She got up and moved towards the door.

Mrs. Bobby followed her with her eyes. "I'll send Celeste to you," she said. "Wear your most becoming gown. Look your best, and do your hair the way I like it. I assure you, such trifles have their effect—even upon a paragon."