Vera was walking up and down her drawing-room at twenty minutes past eight, dressed in one of those filmy white evening gowns with which her wardrobe was always supplied, one of her mermaid frocks, as Lady Susan called them. This one was all gauzy whiteness, with something green and glittering that flashed out of the whiteness now and then, to match the emerald circlet in her cloudy hair.

The tender carnation that had come from her walk was still in her cheeks, still giving unusual brightness to her eyes.

She had been happy; she had put away dark thoughts. Life was gay and glad once again, glad and gay as it had always been when she and Claude were together. A load had been lifted from her heart, the vulgar terror of the conventional wife, who could not imagine friendship without sin. The things that she had heard that afternoon had given a new meaning to life, had lifted her thoughts and feelings from the commonplace to the transcendental; to the sphere in which there was no such thing as sin, where there were only darkness and light, where the senses had no power over the soul that dwelt in communion with souls released from earth. She no longer feared a lover in the friend she had chosen out of the common herd.

Lady Okehampton sailed into the drawing-room as the silvery chime of an Italian clock told the half-hour. Her expansive person, clad in amber satin, glowed like the setting sun, and her smiling face radiated good nature.

She put up her long glass to look at Vera, being somewhat short-sighted physically as well as morally.

"My dear child, you are looking worlds better than when I last saw you. You were such a wreck at Lady Mohun's ball; looked as if you ought to have been in bed, doing a rest cure—a ghost in a diamond tiara. I find that when a woman is looking ill diamonds always make her look worse; but to-night you are charming. That emerald bandeau suits you better than the thing you wore at the ball. You haven't the aquiline profile that can carry off an all-round crown."

Claude and Lady Susan came in together.

"My car nearly collided with his taxi," said Lady Susie, when she had embraced her friend; "but I was very glad to see a man at your door. From what you said this morning, I expected a hen-party. Now a big hen-party is capital fun; but for three women to sit at meat alone! The idea opens an immeasurable vista of boredom. I always feel as if I must draw the butler into the conversation, and bandy an occasional joke with the footmen. No doubt they could be immensely funny if one would let them."

"It was an after-thought," said Claude. "Vera took fright at the eleventh hour, and admitted the serpent into her paradise."

"No doubt Adam and Eve were dull—a perpetual tÊte-À-tÊte, tempered by tame lions, must soon have palled; but at least it was better than three women, yawning in each other's faces, after exhausting the latest scandal."

"I think the early dinner in 'Paradise Lost' quite the dullest meal on record," said Claude. "To begin with, it was vegetarian and non-alcoholic. A man and his wife—the wife waiting at table—and one prosy guest monologuing from the eggs to the apples."

"There is no mention of eggs. I don't think they had anything so comfortable as a poultry yard in Eden; no buff Orpingtons, or white Wyandottes, only eagles and nightingales," said Susie, and at this moment the butler announced dinner in a confidential murmur, as if it were a State secret. He was neither stout nor elderly; but in his tall slimness and grave countenance there was a dignity that would have reduced the most emancipated of matrons to good behaviour.

"I should never dare to draw him into the conversation," whispered Susie, as Claude offered his arm to Lady Okehampton. "Nothing would tempt that perfect creature to a breach of etiquette."

The hen-dinner, relieved by one man, was charming. Not too long a dinner; for one of the discoveries of this easy-going century is that people don't want to sit for an hour and a half steeping themselves in the savour of expensive food, while solemn men in plush and silk stockings stalk behind their back in an endless procession, carrying dishes whose contents are coldly glanced at and coldly refused. The dinner was short, but perfect: too short for the talk, which was gay and animated from start to finish.

Lady Susan and Mr. Rutherford were the talkers, Vera and her aunt only coming in occasionally: Lady Okehampton with a comfortable common-sense that was meant to keep the rodomontade within bounds.

Claude was an omnivorous reader, and had always a new set of anecdotes and epigrams with which to keep the talk alive, anecdotes so brief and sparkling that he seemed to flash them across the table like pistol shots. French, German, or Italian, his accent was faultless, and his enunciation clear as that of the most finished comedian; while in the give and take of friendly chaff with such an interlocutor as Lady Susan, he was a past master.

Vera did not talk much, but she looked radiant, the lovely embodiment of youth and gladness. Her light laughter rang clear above Susan's, after Claude's most successful stories. Once only during that gay repast was a graver note sounded, and it came from the most frivolous of the party, from Susie Amphlett, who had one particular aversion, which she sometimes enlarged upon with a morbid interest.

Age was Susan's bugbear.

"I think of it when I wake in the night, like Camilla, in 'Great Expectations,'" she said, looking round the table with frightened eyes, as if she were seeing ghosts.

The grapes and peaches had been handed, and it was the confidential quarter of an hour after the servants had gone.

"I don't like to give myself away before a butler," Susie said, as the door closed on the last of the silk stockings. "Footmen are non-existent: one doesn't stop to consider whether they are matter, or only electricity; but a butler is a person and can think—perhaps a socialistic satirist, seething with silent scorn for his mistress and her friends."

"And no doubt an esteemed contributor to one of the Society Papers," said Claude.

"I am not afraid of Democracy, nor the English adaptation of the French Revolution, though I feel sure it is coming," continued Lady Susan, planting her elbow on the table in an expansive mood. "I am afraid of nothing except growing old. That one terror swallows up all trivial fears. They might take my money, they might steep me in poverty to the lips, and if I could keep youth and good looks, I should hardly mind."

Again she looked at the others appealingly, like a child that is afraid of Red Riding-hood's wolf.

"Age is such a hideous disease—the one incurable malady. And we must all have it. We are all growing old; even you, Vera, though you have not begun to think about it. I didn't till I was thirty. As we sit at this table and laugh and amuse ourselves, the sands are falling, falling, falling—they never stop! Glad or sorry, that horrible disease goes on, till the symptoms suddenly become acute—grey hair, wrinkles, gout."

"But are there not some mild pleasures left in the years that bring the philosophic mind?" asked Claude.

"Does that mean when one is eighty? At eighty one might easily be philosophic. Everything would be over and done with. One would be like old Lord Tyrawly, who said he was dead, though people did not know it."

"Some of the most delightful people I have known were old, and even very old," said Claude, "but they didn't mind. That's the secret of eternal youth, my dear Susie—not to mind: to wear the best wig you can buy, and not to pretend it is your own hair: to wear pretty clothes, especially suited to your years, sumptuous velvet and more sumptuous fur, like a portrait of an old lady by Velasquez: never to brag of your age, but never to be ashamed of it. The last phase may be the best phase, if one has the philosophic mind."

"Oh, you," exclaimed Susan scornfully, "you are like Chesterfield. You will have your good manners till your last death-bed visitor has been given a chair. A fine manner is the only thing that time can't touch."

Vera saw her aunt looking bored, and smiled the signal for moving.

"Half a cigarette, and I shall follow," said Claude, as he opened the door for the trio, "unless I am distinctly forbidden."

"Why should we forbid you? You are an artist, and you know more about frocks and hats than we do, after years of laborious study," said Lady Susan, and then, with her arm through Vera's as they went slowly up the broad staircase, with steps so shallow that people accustomed to small houses were in danger of falling over them, "Isn't he incomparable?" she exclaimed. "There never was such a delightful failure."

"Poor Claude," sighed Lady Okehampton. "I suppose it is only the men who fail in everything who have time to be agreeable. If a young man has a great ambition, and is thinking of his career, he is generally a bear. Claude has wasted all his chances in life, and can afford to waste his time."

"It was a pity he left the Army," said Susan. "He looked lovely in his uniform. I remember him as he flashed past me in a hansom, one summer morning after a levÉe, a vision of beauty."

"It was a pity he got himself entrapped by a bad woman," said Lady Okehampton with a sigh.

"His Colonel's second wife," put in Lady Susan. "Isn't it always the elderly Colonel's second wife?"

Lady Okehampton gave another sigh.

"It was a disgraceful story," she murmured. "Let us try to forget all about it."

Vera had flushed and paled while they were talking.

"But tell me about it, Aunt Mildred," she said, with a kind of angry eagerness. "Where was the disgrace, more than in all such cases? A wicked woman, a foolish young man—very young, wasn't he?"

"Not five and twenty."

"Where was the disgrace?"

"Don't excite yourself, child. Duplicity—an old man's heart broken—Isn't that enough? An elopement or not an elopement; something horrid that happened after a regimental ball. I know nothing of the details, for it all took place while the regiment was in India, which only shows that Kipling's stories are true to life. The husband would not divorce her—which was a blessing—or Claude would have had to marry her. He spoilt his career by the intrigue; but marriage would have been worse."

Vera's heart was beating violently when Claude sauntered into the room presently, and made his leisurely way to the sofa where she was sitting aloof from the other two, who had just entered upon an animated discussion of the last fashionable nerve-specialist and his methods.

"What has made you so pale?" Claude asked, as he seated himself by Vera's side. "Was our walk through the streets too much for you? I should never forgive myself if——"

"You have nothing to be sorry for. The walk was delightful. My aunt and Susie have been talking of unpleasant things."

"What kind of things?"

"Of your leaving the Army. You have never told me why you threw up your career."

"My career! There was not much to lose. The Boer War was over; my regiment was in India all the time, and I never had a look in. Oh, they have been telling you an ugly story about your poor friend; and it will be 'The door is shut' again, I suppose."

"Why did not you tell me of your past life? I have told you everything about mine."

"Because you had only nice innocent things to tell. My story would not bear telling—and why should you want to know?"

"There should not be a wall between friends—such friends as we have been—like brother and sister."

"Do brothers tell old love stories? Stale, barren stories of loves that are dead?"

"Perhaps not. I oughtn't to have spoken about it. Come and talk to Aunt Mildred. Her carriage has been announced, and she'll be huffed if we don't go to her."

Claude followed meekly, and in five minutes Lady Okehampton had forgotten that it was eleven o'clock, and that her horses had been waiting half an hour. He had a curious power of making women pleased with themselves, and with him. He always flattered them; but his flattery was so discreet and subtle as to be imperceptible. It was rather his evident delight in being with them and talking to them that pleased, than anything that he said.

"Come to River Mead for next Sunday. It will be my last week-end party before we go to Scotland," Lady Okehampton said to him before she bade good night. "Vera and Susan are coming. We shall be a small party, and there will be plenty of bridge."

Claude accepted the invitation as he took Lady Okehampton to her carriage.

"I wish Provana were not so much away from his wife," she said. "It is a very difficult position for Vera."

"Vera is not la premiÈre venue. She knows how to take care of herself."

"That's what they always say about women; but is it true in her case? She is very young, and rather simple, and knows very little of the world."

"Not after six years as the wife of a financial Croesus?" murmured Claude, while he arranged the matron's voluminous mantle over her shoulders as carefully as if the outside atmosphere had been arctic.

He knew that the drift of her speech had been by way of warning for him. Dear, inconsistent soul! It was so like her to invite him to spend three days with her niece in the sans gÊne of a riverside villa, and five minutes afterwards to sound a note of warning.

He walked along the lamp-lit streets with the light foot of triumphant love. Vera's pale distress and unwise questioning had set his heart beating with the presage of victory. Poor child! For his acute perceptions, the heart of a woman had seldom been a mystery, and this woman's heart was easier to read than most. Poor child! She had been trying to live without him. She had fought her poor little battle, with more of resolution and of courage than he would have expected from a creature so tender. She had kept him out of her life for a long time—time that had seemed an eternity for him, in his longing for her; and then, at a word, at a smile, at the touch of his hand, she had yielded, and had let him see that to be with him was to be happy, and that nothing else mattered. Light love had been his portion in the light years of youth; but this was no light love. He had sacrificed his career for the sake of a woman; but the sacrifice had been forced upon him, and it had killed his love. But now he was prepared for any sacrifice—for the sacrifice of life-long exile, and strained means. He thought of a home in a summer isle of the great southern ocean, like Stevenson's; or, if gaiety were better, in some romantic city of Spanish America. There were paradises enough in the world, there would be no one to point the finger of scorn, where "Society" was a word of no meaning.

He would carry his love to the world's end, beyond the reach of shame. Nothing mattered but Vera. Yes, there was one who mattered. His mother! But to-night he could not even think of her, or if he thought of her it was to tell himself that if Provana divorced his wife, and he and Vera were married, his mother would be reconciled to the inevitable. Her religion would be a stumbling block. To her mind such a marriage would be no marriage. To-night he could not reason, he would not see obstacles in his path. Vera's pale looks and anxious questions had been a confession of love, a forecast of surrender; and in the tumult of his thoughts there was no room for hesitation or for fear.

He thought of his love now as duty. It was his duty to rescue this dear girl from a loveless union with a hard man of business, old enough to be her father, from splendours and luxuries that had become as dust and ashes. He had known for a long time that she cared for him; but he had never reckoned the strength of her attachment. Only this afternoon, in her radiant happiness, as they walked through the unromantic streets; only in her pale distress to-night, as she questioned him, had he discovered his power: and now there seemed to be but one possible issue—a new life for them both.

His mother's absence from London was an inexpressible relief to him. How could he have met the tender questioning of the eyes that watched over his life, and had learned how to read his mind from the time when thought began? How could he have hidden the leaping, passionate thoughts, the sense of a crisis in his fate, the ardent expectation, the dream of joy, the fever and excitement in the mind of a man who is making his plan of a new life, a life of exquisite happiness?