It was the end of February, and the Roman villa was soon to be left to cobwebs and custodians. The Piazza d'Ispagnia and the broad steps of the TrinitÀ were alive with spring flowers, and the air had the soft sweetness of an English April on the verge of May. White lilac and MarÉchal Niel roses were in all the shops; bright yellow jonquils, and red and blue anemones, filled the baskets of rustic hawkers at the street corners. Rome's innumerable fountains plashed and sparkled in the sun; and Rome's delicious atmosphere, at once soft, caressing, and inspiriting, made the heart glad.

The carnival was over, and the season was waning. Lady Susan Amphlett was never tired of telling people that she had had the best time she had ever had in her life—excursions to Naples, Florence, and all the cities of Tuscany; motor drives to every place worth seeing within fifty miles of Rome; a midnight party with fireworks in the Baths of Caracalla; a dance by torchlight, and a champagne supper, in the Colosseum. In this latter festivity the strangeness of the scene had been too exciting, and the revel had almost degenerated into an orgy.

"My cousin is simply wonderful at inventing things," Susie, playing her accustomed part of chorus, told people, "and he gets permissions and privileges that no one else would dare ask for."

The end had come. To-morrow's meet at the tomb of Cecilia Metella was the last of the season; and Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford were to start for London on the following day—a long journey in a lit-salon, with the monotony of dinner-wagon meals to make the journey odious.

"If one could only take a box of bath buns and foie-gras sandwiches!" sighed Susie. "With those and my tea basket I should be utterly happy; but the same insipid omelette, and the same tough chicken and endive salad, for eight and forty hours! Quelle corvÉe!"

It was the last morning, a lovely morning. Sunshine was flooding the great rooms, and making even the tapestried walls look gay. Susan, for once in her life, came down to breakfast, in a black satin nÉgligÉ, with a valenciennes cap that made her look enchanting.

"I wanted to see Claude in pink—Roman pink," she said, looking at the slim, tall figure in Leicestershire clothes. "You ought always to wear those clothes," said Susie, clapping her hands, as at the reception of a favourite actor. "They make you bewilderingly beautiful. Now I know why you are so keen on hunting."

"Do you think any man cares how his coat is cut, or who made his boots, when he may be dead at the bottom of a ditch before the end of the run?" Claude said, laughing. "Some of the best days I have had have been in rat-catcher clothes."

He was radiant with pleasant expectations. He could do without Leicestershire hedges, and hundred-acre fields, and all the perfection of English fox-hunting. To-day the Campagna would be good enough—with its rough ground and yawning chasms, wider and deeper than the worst of the Somersetshire rhines. The Campagna would be good enough. He was in high spirits, and he was singing a wicked little French song as his man buckled on his spurs, a little song that Gavroche and his companions of the Paris gutters had been singing all the winter.

Lady Susan drove to the meet in one of the Provana carriages, picking up a couple of lively American friends on her way. Vera excused herself from going with her friend, and went off for a ramble with the Irish terrier, much to Susie's disgust.

"You like that rough-haired beast's company better than mine," she complained.

"Only when I want to be alone with memories and dreams."

"You are growing too horridly morbid, Vera. I am afraid you have taken up religion. It's very sweet of you, darling, but it's the way to lose your husband. Religion is the one thing a husband won't put up with. He hates it worse than a bad cook."

"No, I have not taken up religion."

"Then it's spiritualism, which is just as bad. It is all Mr. Symeon's doing. You live in a world of ghosts."

"There are ghosts that one loves. But there will be no ghosts where I shall be walking to-day. Only wild flowers and spring sunshine."

She watched Susan take her seat in the carriage—a vision of coquettish prettiness and expensive clothes. Susan's husband had gone back to London and Newmarket some time since, not being able to "stick" Rome after the Craven meeting. He had enjoyed some good runs with the Roman pack, and he had been shown St. Peter's and the Colosseum, and had played bridge with famous American players at Claude Rutherford's club; so what more was there for him to do?

Vera and her dog went to the Campagna by a roundabout way that avoided that noble road between the tombs of the mighty, by which the hunting men and their followers would go. She roamed in rural lanes, where violets and wild hyacinths were scenting the warm air, and sat in a solitary nook, musing over a volume of Carducci, while Boroo hunted the hedge and scratched the bank, in a wild quest of the rats that haunted his dreams as he sprawled on the Persian prayer-rug before the fire.

It was late afternoon when Vera left the quiet lane and turned into the dusty road that led to the tomb of Cecilia Metella; lingering on her way to admire a team of those magnificent fawn-coloured and cream-white oxen, whose beauty always went to her heart. She recalled Carducci's lovely sonnet, "Il Bove," those exquisite lines which Giulia Provana had repeated to her as they drove along the rural roads near San Marco, and which she learned from her friend's lips before she had ever seen a printed page of the Italian's verse.

All signs of horse and hound had disappeared before she came to Cecilia's tomb; there were no people in carriages, no loitering peasants or British bicyclists, waiting about on the chance of a ringing run, which would bring pack and field sweeping round the wide plain in sight of the starting-point. There was no one—only the vast expanse of greyish-green herbage, with here and there a heap of ruins that had been a palace or a tomb, and here and there a red-capped shepherd and his flock. Vera strolled along the grass, taking no heed of vehicles or foot-passengers on the higher level of the Appian Way. She had her time chiefly engaged in keeping Boroo to heel, where only duty could keep him, instinct and a passionate inclination urging him to make a raid on the sheep. Distance would have been as nothing. He would have crossed the expanse of rugged ground in a flash, if Vera's frown and Vera's threatening voice had not subjugated that which, next to fighting, was a master passion.

She was absorbed in her endeavour to keep the faithful beast under control, when the sound of laughter on the road above made her come to a sudden stop, and look, and listen.

She knew the laugh. It had once been music in her ears. That frank, joyous laugh, the ripple of gladness that defied the Fates, had once been an element in the glamour that cast its spell over her life. But now the laugh jarred: there was a false note in the music.

A woman was riding at Claude's bridle-hand; their horses walking slowly, close together; and he was leaning over her to listen and to talk; his hand was on her saddle, and their heads were very near, as he bent to speak and to listen. Vera could hear their voices in the clear air of a Roman sundown; but not the words that they were speaking. One thing only was plain, that after each scrap of talk there came that ripple of joyous laughter from the man; and then, after a little more talk, with heads still closer, the boisterous mirth of a reckless woman.

The woman was Mrs. Bellenden. What other rider after those Roman hounds had a figure like hers, the exquisite lines, the curves of bust and throat that the sculptors were talking about?

The woman was Mrs. Bellenden, in one of her amusing moods. That was her charm, as Susan Amphlett had explained it to Vera. She made men laugh.

"That is her secret," said Susan; "she remembers all the stories her madcap husband told her when she was young and they shocked her. She dishes them up with a spice of her own, and she makes men laugh. She can keep them dangling for a year and hold them at arm's length; while a mere beauty would bore them after a month, unless she came to terms. That's her secret. But, of course, it comes to the same in the end. Such a woman's affairs must have the inevitable conclusion. Her pigeons last longer in the plucking, and she gets more feathers out of them. You had better look after your husband before he goes too far!"

Nothing had moved Vera from her placid acceptance of fate. "I suppose my husband must amuse himself with a flirtation now and then, when his racing stable begins to pall," she said.

"Vera, you and Claude are drifting apart," exclaimed Susie, with a horrified air.

It was a gruesome discovery for Chorus, who had gone about the world singing the praises of this ideal couple—these exquisite married lovers—and talking about Eden and Arcadia.

Vera smiled an enigmatic smile.

Drifting apart! No, it was not drifting apart. It was a cleft as wide and deep as one of those yawning chasms on the Campagna, that the sportsmen boasted of jumping with their Northamptonshire hunters.

This was Vera's last day in Rome. They started on the homeward journey next morning, but instead of travelling with her husband by the Paris express, she took it into her head to linger on the way. She stopped at Pisa, she stopped at Porto Fino, she stopped at Genoa; and last of all, she stopped at San Marco to look at Mario Provana's grave.

"I may never see Italy again," she said, when Susan tried to dissuade her. "I have a presentiment that I shall never see this dear land any more."

"For my part I should not be sorry if I knew I was never coming back to the villa," her husband answered. "It is too big for a house to live in. It must soon fall to the fate of other Roman palaces, and become one of the sights of the city; to be shown for two lire a head to Dr. Lunn and his fellow-travellers."

Vera had her way. In this respect she and her husband were essentially modern. They never interfered with each other's caprices. He travelled by the Paris express, and stayed at the Ritz just long enough to see the latest impropriety at the Palais Royal, and it happened curiously that Mrs. Bellenden was travelling by the same train on the same day, stopping at the same hotel, attended by a young lady who would have been faultless as a dame de compagnie except for a chronic neuralgia, which often compelled her to isolate herself in her hotel bedroom. Vera went along the lovely coast with Susie, who declared herself delighted to escape the monotony of the dinner-wagon, and to see some of the most delicious spots in Italy with her dearest Vee, to which monosyllable friendship had reduced Vera's name. In an age that has substituted the telegraph and the telephone for the art of letter-writing, it is well that names should be reduced to the minimum, and that our favourite politician should be "Joe," our greatest general "Bobs," and our dearest friend M. or N. rather than Margherita or Naomi.

Vera showed Lady Susan all the things that were best worth seeing in Genoa and the neighbourhood, and they lingered at Porto Fino, and other lovely nooks along that undulating coastline; garden villages dipping their edges into the blue water, and flushed with the pink glory of blossoming peach trees, raining light petals upon the young grass. It was the loveliest season of the Italian spring; and all along their way the world was glad with flowers. They missed nothing but the birds that were making grey old England glad before the flowers, but which here had been sacrificed to the young Italian's idea of sport.

There was only one spot to which Vera went alone, and that was Mario Provana's grave. Happily, Susan had forgotten that he was buried at San Marco; and she wondered that Vera should have arranged to break the journey and stop a night at a place where there was absolutely nothing to see.

Certainly it was not very far from Genoa; but a slow train and a headache made the journey seem an eternity to the impatient Susan, and when San Marco came she was very glad of her dinner and bed, and to have her hair taken down, after it had been hurting her all the way, and to no end, as she was utterly indifferent to the opinion of a couple of natives, the provincial Italian being no more to her than a red-skinned son of the Five Nations or a New Zealander.

Vera was able to spend an hour in the yew tree enclosure in the morning freshness, between six and seven. She had telegraphed her order for a hundred white roses to the San Marco florist the day before, and the flowers were ready for her in a light, spacious basket, in the hall of the hotel, when she came downstairs in the dim sunrise.

"It is the last time," she said to herself, as she covered the great marble slab with her roses, and stooped to lay cold lips on the cold stone. "Giulia—Mario," she murmured tenderly, with lingering lips.

"I am not afraid," she said to herself. "I know that he has forgiven me."

Maid and footman and luggage went by the morning train; and half an hour after Vera and her friend left San Marco, in a carriage that was to take them to Ventimiglia. By this means they had the drive in the morning sunshine, and escaped the long wait at the frontier, only entering the dismal station five minutes before their train left Italy.

They spent that night in Marseilles, where Susan Amphlett insisted upon seeing the CannebiÈre by lamplight; and they were in Paris on the following evening, and in London the next day.

"And now you are going to begin a splendid season," said Susie, "in this dear old house. The rooms look mere pigeon-holes after your Roman villa; but there's no place like London. And I really think Claude is right. The Villa Provana is much too big, and just a wee bit eerie. It suggests ghosts, if one does not see them. One of those sweet young Bersaglieri told me that your husband's father made a man fight a duel to the death with him in one of those weird upper rooms; and that the stamping of their feet and the rattle of their rapiers is heard at a quarter past two on every fifteenth of November. When I heard the story I felt rather glad I did not come to you till December. Aren't you pleased to be home, Vera, in these cosy drawing-rooms?"

Everything in life is a question of contrast, and after the Villa Provana the drawing-room in Portland Place, with its five long windows and perspective of other drawing-rooms through a curtained archway, looked as snug as a suburban parlour.

"Aren't you glad to be home?" persisted Susan.

"No, Susie. I would rather have spent the rest of my life in Italy."

"Oh, I suppose you prefer the climate. You are one of those people who care about the state of the sky. I don't. I like people, and shops, and theatres, and the opera at Covent Garden. Milan or Naples may be the proper place for music; but we get all the best singers. Don't think me ungrateful, Vera. I revelled in Rome. A place where one can go, from buying gloves and fans in the Corso, to gloating over the circus where the Christian martyrs fought with lions, must be full of charm for anybody with a mind. Rome made a student of me. I read two historical primers, and a novel of Marion Crawford's; besides dipping into Augustus Hare's delightful books. I haven't been so studious since I attended the Cambridge extension lectures, with my poor old governess, who used to amuse us by going to sleep, and giving herself away by nodding. Her poor old bonnet used to waggle till it made even the lecturer laugh."

Susie went off to join Mr. Amphlett in Northamptonshire; but she was to establish herself at the little house in Green Street directly after Easter, and then she and her dearest Vee must spend their lives together.

Vera was not sorry to speed the parting guest. She had had rather too much of Susie in that month of Rome; for though she had lived her own life, in a great measure, there was always the sense that Susie was there, and that she ought to give more of her time to her friend.

She had suffered one grief in coming to London, for on landing at Dover she had to part with the Irish terrier, who was led off by a famous dog-doctor's subordinate, to spend six months in isolation, which was to be made as pleasant to him as such imprisonment could be made to an intelligent dog, warmly attached to a mistress who had raised him from the canine to the human by her companionship. Boroo was to pass six months in quarantine before he could stretch himself on the prayer-rug at his mistress's feet, and roll upon his back in an ecstasy of contentment. Boroo might be made comfortable in the retreat, as one of the favourites of fortune; but Boroo would not be happy without his mistress, and the first telephonic communication from the canine hotel informed Mrs. Rutherford that her faithful friend had refused food and was very restless. The functionary who gave this information assured her that this was only a passing phase in dog-life, and that the terrier would be happier next day. And the account next day was comparatively cheerful; the terrier had eaten a little sheep's head and was livelier. Vera hated the law which deprived her of the only friend who had comforted her in hours of deepest dejection. The dog's welcome after every parting, the dog's abounding love, had given a new zest to life. Was there any other love left her now quite as real as this? Her husband, her enthusiastic friend Susan, all the train of affectionate aunts and cousins—the girl cousins who came to her to relate their love affairs; the baby cousins who kissed her when their nurses told them, holding up cherry lips, and smiling with sweet blue eyes—three generations of Disbrowes! Was there one among them all whose love she could believe in as she could in her Irish terrier?

Six months without Boroo! It was a dreary time to think of. Boroo was the only creature who could take her mind away from herself and her life's history. He had given her the beatitude of loving and being loved, without romance—without passion—without looking before or after: and, realising the difference this dumb creature made, she could but think with melancholy longing of what a child would have meant in her life.

And now began the familiar round in the familiar house, with the Disbrowes gathering strong as of old to help and to suggest—to bring to Vera's parties the few great people who had not yet discovered that a Mrs. Rutherford whose wealth had come out of the City could be so particularly attractive, or could give parties that had always a touch of originality that made them worth one's while. These mighty ones told each other that it was the absence of conventionality that made Vera's house so agreeable; while Lady Susan, still playing her part of Chorus, told the mighty ones that it was because her cousin was a poet's daughter, and made an atmosphere of poetry round her.

"Vera lives in a world of dreams," she said, "and we are all dreamers, though the horrid everyday world comes between us and our fairest visions. I think that's why we love her."

A Princess of the blood royal happened to meet Vera at this time, and became one of her most ardent admirers, lunching or dining in Portland Place at least once a week, and visiting Mrs. Rutherford in her opera box. She had heard of the Roman villa and the Roman parties.

"I shall spend next January in Rome on purpose to see more of you," she said, upon which Claude, who was present, begged that her Royal Highness would make the Villa Provana her home whenever she came to the Eternal City; an invitation which her Royal Highness graciously promised to remember.

"My sweet girl, you are on the crest of the wave," Lady Okehampton told her niece. "You were never so much the fashion as this year. You ought to be proud of your social success."

"I wish I had my dog out of quarantine," was all Vera said.

"Get another dog—a Pekinese lion; ever so much smarter than your rough brute."

The season wore through somehow in perpetual gaieties which the wife hated, but which were essential to the husband's well-being. He had all the racing world, and never missed an important meeting; but when there was no racing he wanted dinner-parties, or crowded evenings, abroad or at home. Later there would be Cowes, where he had a new yacht just out of the builder's yard, waiting to beat every boat in the Channel.

He did not often look at his wife's visiting list, being content to give her the names of the men who were to be asked to her dinners, taking it for granted that they would be asked. Every evening party was more or less an omnium gatherum; and about these he asked no questions—but more than once, between March and June, he had suggested that Mrs. Bellenden should be invited to dinner—to some smallish semi-literary and artistic dinner—and this suggestion being ignored, he had advised her being included in one of the big dinner-parties, where the mighty ones had been bidden to meet the royal Princess.

"I don't think that would do," Vera answered coldly.

"You forget that Mrs. Bellenden is one of the handsomest women in London," Claude answered with some touch of temper, "and that people like to meet a well-known beauty."

"I'm afraid Mrs. Bellenden is rather too well known. You had better give a dinner at 'Claridge's' or the 'Ritz,' Claude, and let Susan do hostess for you. Susie would enjoy it."

"I suppose it will come to that," said Claude. "I'll take one of your Wagner nights—when I know you'll be happy."

Lady Susan having warned her friend against the siren, was not so disloyal as to play hostess at a Bohemian dinner.

"No, Claude," she said when the idea was mooted. "I have never been prudish, but I draw the line at Mrs. Bellenden."

Her cousin shrugged his shoulders, and left the room with a snatch of a French chanson, which was his most forcible expression of temper. The light tenor voice, the gay French verse, harmonised with the nature in which there were no depths.

Goodwood was once more imminent, and Cowes was in the near future, when Vera sent out cards for her last evening party, which would be one of the last of the season, on the eve of the exodus of smart London. The Princess Hermione was to be at the party—and this royal lady was like that more famous heroine of the nursery, who rode her white horse to Banbury Cross in a musical ride; for, like that famous lady, the Princess expected to have music wherever she went, music, and of the best, for the royal Hermione was a connoisseur, and herself no mean performer on the violoncello. A famous baritone and an equally famous mezzo-soprano were to sing during the evening, in the inner drawing-room, not in a formal way with programmes and rout seats, for people to be packed in rows, to sit there from start to finish till, in our elegant twentieth-century English, they were "fed up" with squalling.

Everything was to be informal; and the people who did not want music would have space enough in the larger rooms and on the staircase to babble and to flirt as they chose; while that inner drawing-room would be, as it were, a sanctuary for the elect, a temple of the god of harmony.

Vera stood at the door of the larger drawing-room receiving her guests, from ten to half-past, when the Princess Hermione, who had just arrived, put her arm through her hostess's and asked eagerly:

"Did you get him?" Signor Pergolesi, the baritone, understood.

"Yes, ma'am, he is in the little drawing-room with Madame Rondolana, waiting to sing to you!"

"Take me there this moment, Vera!" and hooked by the royal arm in a crumpled glove, Vera led the Princess and her lady-in-waiting through the babbling crowd to the sanctuary where the elect were beginning to bore each other while they waited for the first song.

Herr Mainz was at the piano ready to accompany the two singers whose engagement he had negotiated. At all concerts of this clever gentleman's arranging it seemed to some people as if the artists were puppets, and that he pulled the string that set them going all through the performance. To-night, however, there was to be less string-pulling and more sans faÇon, or rather it was Princess Hermione who was to pull the string.

She certainly lost no time in telling Madame Rondolana what she wanted her to sing, and she kept that brilliant vocalist rolling out song after song in the rich abundance of a mezzo-soprano that nothing could tire. She sang song after song, at the Princess's nod; Italian, German, Swedish, nay, even English, with an ease that testified to power without limit. The baritone looked and listened with languid interest, not offended, for he knew that his turn would come, and that when once the Princess started him she would never let him leave off. He sat near the piano in an easy attitude; not listening, but turning his thoughts inward, and making up his mind as to what songs he would sing. Wagner? Yes. Bizet? Yes, but in any case "Die beiden Grenadiere" as a finish—and then those massive folding doors, that were shutting out the babblers, should be flung wide open, and he would sing to the whole of the company. He could stop their talking—those two grenadiers were infallible.

"Viz dat song I alvays knock zaim in ze Ole Ken' Road," he used to tell his friends.

At eleven o'clock there came a kind of subtle sense of something wanting, even beyond that exquisite music; and Lady Okehampton whispered to her niece that it was time the Princess went to supper, and that Claude must take her downstairs. Vera went in search of him. The crowd in the biggest drawing-room had thinned, and she was able to look for her husband—but without success; and she went through the other rooms to the spacious landing, in which direction most people were drifting, and there she met a perturbed spirit in the form of Susan Amphlett.

"What's the matter, Susie? Is there anything wrong?"

"Wrong!" cried Susie. "I call it simply disgusting. How could you be such a fool?"

"What have I done?"

"To ask that horrid woman, and with your Princess for the guest of the evening! She ain't prudish; but I fancy she'll think it a bit steep to find herself rubbing shoulders with Mrs. Bellenden."

"I have not invited Mrs. Bellenden."

"Someone else has, then. Or else she has come like the lady at Cannes, invitÉe ou non."

"Is Mrs. Bellenden here?"

"Yes, in the supper-room, in a mob of admirers. Claude took her down to supper."

"That's rather tiresome," Vera answered quietly, "for he ought to take the Princess, and I can't keep her waiting. Do be kind, Susie, and go and tell him he must come to the music-room this minute. The Princess ought to have gone down before anybody, and now you say there's a mob."

"A perfect bear-garden of greedy beasts. I don't believe there'll be an ortolan left by the time she comes. Anyhow, I'll make it hot for Claude!" and Susie hurried off, elbowing a desperate way through the crowd on the stairs. "Mon dieu, quel four!" she muttered.

Vera went back to the sanctuary, impounding her uncle Okehampton on the way, in case she found the friendly Hermione indisposed to wait for her host.

She found her Princess with a dark and angry brow, standing near the door, whispering to her attendant lady. She had the look of a Princess who had been "almost waiting," and who did not like the sensation. She heard that Mr. Rutherford was making his way through the crowd to attend upon her, with an air of supreme indifference.

"Lord Okehampton is one of my old friends," she said, and took his offered arm without looking at Vera. "Mr. Rutherford can bring Pauline," she said, as they moved away.

Pauline was the lady-in-waiting, a colourless spinster of seven-and-thirty, who loved everything the Princess loved, and hated everything she hated, and who dressed like the Princess, only much worse.

Lord Okehampton made himself vastly agreeable, and the mob, seeing the royal brow under the tiara, made way for the couple, and there was a table found for the royal lady in an agreeable position, and there were ortolans and peaches without stint; but when Claude came presently with the Honourable Pauline he received a snub so unmistakable that he was glad to carry his Honourable companion to the remotest corner of the room, where he gave her a sumptuous supper, and had the consolation of her sympathy.

"The Princess has a heart of gold," she told him, "but her temper is dreadful sometimes, and life is rather difficult with her."

"Not quite a bed of roses," said Claude.

"It would be ungrateful of me to call it a bed of stinging-nettles," said Pauline, "because as there are five of us at home, all unmarried, I have to do something; and the Princess is wonderfully kind, and then she is so clever and accomplished. She does everything well; but music is her passion."

"That's how I made my mistake," said Claude. "I thought her enjoyment of her own particular baritone would have lasted longer, and that I should have been in attendance before she was inclined to move."

"The Princess has a good appetite," said Pauline, discussing her fourth ortolan, "and one really does get very hungry at an evening party. Music is so exhausting. I hope that dear Pergolesi and Madame Rondolana are having something."

"Our good friend Mainz will take care of that."

"Apropos," said Pauline. "There is a lady here I am rather curious about. We passed her on the stairs. Mrs. Bellenden. Gloriously handsome, and all that; but frankly, Mr. Rutherford, I was just a wee, wee bit surprised to see her in your wife's house, especially to meet the Princess. I hardly like to speak of such things; but has she not been just a little talked about lately? Of course, I know she went everywhere two years ago; but just lately people have said things; and one has not run against her at the best houses."

"Of course she has been talked about," answered Claude, with his frank laugh. "Meteors are talked about. A woman so exceptionally beautiful is like Halley's Comet. People are sure to talk about her; and the ill-natured talkers will make scandal about her. Poor Mrs. Bellenden! Quite a harmless person, I assure you; open-hearted, generous, impulsive—a trifle imprudent, perhaps, as these impulsive women always are."

The lady-in-waiting had supped too well to be ill-natured.

"I am so glad you have told me. I shall tell the Princess that there is no foundation for any of the stories we have heard about poor Mrs. Bellenden," she said, as they left the supper-room.

The sanctuary was full of people when Lord Okehampton took the Princess back, after a leisurely supper, during which they had talked over old friends and things that had happened a dozen years ago, when Okehampton was Master of the Horse. The Princess had recovered her temper, and was ready to enjoy her favourite Pergolesi; but Vera, who had not left the music-room, looked white and weary; and the kindly Hermione chid her for not having followed her to the supper-room. All the best people were now gathered in the inner drawing-room; some for the Princess, and some for the baritone; and only the royal chair was vacant when the royal lady reappeared. Pergolesi chuckled at the thought that Rondolana had lavished her octave and a half of perfection on the chosen few; while he had all the finest tiaras, and the largest display of shoulders and diamonds for his audience.

Hermione beckoned him to her side, and they discussed what songs he should sing; she ordering, but he making her order what he wanted and had made up his mind about.

"I should like to finish viz 'Die beiden Grenadiere,'" he said in his broken English. "I think it is one of your favourites, ma'am?"

"Je l'adore."

Song after song was received with enthusiasm. Herr Mainz played a brilliant "Mazourka de Salon," while the baritone rested and whispered with the Princess, and when the silvery chimes of an Italian eight-day clock announced midnight, the great doors were thrown open and Pergolesi hurled his splendid voice upon the crowd in the outer room.

A phrase or two, and the babble of three hundred voices had become silence; and when the song was done the crowd melted away, still in comparative stillness, while Vera stood on the landing to see them pass, as if she were holding a review. No one wanted to begin talking after that stupendous song. People had stayed later than they intended, till it was too late to go on to other, and perhaps better, houses. The Princess had gone out by a second staircase, which had been kept clear for her, with Pergolesi and Okehampton to escort her downstairs, and Claude Rutherford to put her into her carriage. She went off in a charming mood, but could not refrain from a stab at the last.

"Your wife's party has been perfect," she said, "but the company just a little mixed. I suspect you of having introduced the Bohemian element, in the shape of that handsome lady whom everybody has been talking about."

There were lingerers after that, and the party was not over till one o'clock. The last guest strolled into the pale grey night as Big Ben tolled the first hour of day. Claude followed his wife up the broad staircase, where the heated atmosphere was heavy with the scent of arum lilies, and the daturas that hung their white bells in all the corners. She was moving slowly, tired and languid after the long evening, and she never looked back. He followed her to the door of her room; but she stopped upon the threshold, turned and faced him, ashy pale in her white gown, like a ghost.

"Good-bye," she said, with a face of stone.

"Vera, for God's sake! What's the matter?"

"Good-bye," she repeated, and, as he moved towards her, she drew back suddenly, so quickly that he was unprepared for the movement, and shut the door in his face.

He heard the key turning in the lock, shrugged his shoulders, and walked slowly along the gallery to his own room, not the room that had been Mario Provana's dressing-room.

"Some ass has been telling her things," he muttered to himself.

And then he thought of Mrs. Bellenden's appearance that night, in a gown of gold tissue, and a diamond tiara. She had been too insolently splendid in her overweening beauty, too tremendous, too suggestive of Cleopatra at Actium, a woman who lived upon the ruin of men.

What wife, who cared for her husband, could help being angry if she saw him near such a creature?

And he had been near her all the night. He had whispered with her in corners, hung over her perfumed shoulders, followed her close as her shadow, sat with her in a nest of tropical flowers in the balcony, instead of moving about among his guests.

He had taken her down to the supper-room, first among the first, neglecting duchesses and a princess of the blood royal for her sake. No doubt that malicious little wretch Susan Amphlett had been watching him, and had reported all his misdoings to Vera.

"What does it matter?" he said to himself. "My life was growing unbearable. The gloom was closing round me like a funeral pall. Kate was my only refuge. I have never been in love with her; but she stops me from thinking."

That was the secret. Mrs. Bellenden had been his Nepenthe, when the common round of pleasures had lost their power to make him forget.

Mrs. Bellenden was like strong drink, like opium or hashish. She killed thought. She filled the vacant spaces in his life—the Stygian swamps where black thoughts wandered in space, like angry devils. Her exactions, her quarrels, their partings and reunions, the agitations and turmoil of her existence, had filled his life. When he banged the hall door of the bijou house in Brown Street behind him after one of their stormy farewells he knew that he would go back to her in a week. He tramped the adjacent Park across and across, along and along, in a fury, and thanked God that he had done with "that harpy"; but he knew that he would have to go back to the harpy, to be reconciled again, with oaths and kisses and tears, and to quarrel again, and to obey her orders, and go here or there as she made him. The most degrading slavery to a wicked woman was better than the great silent house and the horror that inhabited it.

His wife had her consolations, nay, even her hysterical delights. She could shut herself in her white temple with the spirits of her worshipped dead. She heard voices. Death now hardly counted with her, neither Death nor Time. Saint Francis of Assisi was as near her as Robert Browning. Shakespeare was no more remote than Henry Irving. She was mad.

The emptiness, the silence, the gloom, were killing him. If there had been children, all might have been different. The past would have been forgotten in those new and forward-looking lives. His sons and daughters would not have let him remember past things. And Vera would not have had time for morbid thoughts, for nursing dark memories. Her children would have made her forget.

He had some kind of explanation with her on the day after the party, and made some feeble kind of apology. But she was cold and dumb; she expressed no anger, neither complained nor reproached him; she shed no tears. She stood before him in her white silence, still beautiful, but with a pale, unearthly beauty that chilled his heart. All the force of the old love swept back upon him; and his heart ached with a passion of pity and regret. He seized her by the shoulders—so frail, so wasted, since last year—and looked at her with despairing eyes. "Vera, you are killing yourself by inches. What can I do? What can I do for you? Shall we go away? Ever so far away? to new worlds—to places where the stupendous phenomena of Nature, and the things that men have made, will take us out of ourselves? There are things in this world so tremendous that they can kill thought. The Zambesi, the Aztec cities of Mexico, the great Wall of China."

"You are very good," she answered, coldly but not unkindly—rather with a weary indifference, as of a soul too tired to feel or think. "I am quite contented here. My life in this house suits me as well as any life could."

"In this house?" he cried.

"Yes, in this house. I am not alone here. But I don't want to keep you here if the house makes you unhappy. You had better go away, Claude; go anywhere you like, as you like. I shall not complain."

"Are you giving me a letter of license?" he asked, with a harsh laugh. "Is your love quite dead?"

"Everything is dead," she answered.

He could get no more from her, and he left her in anger.

"You had better divorce me and marry Francis Symeon," he said, "and cultivate spookism together."

The natural sequel to a scene like that was a little dinner at Claridge's with Mrs. Bellenden, and an evening at the silliest musical comedy to be seen and heard in London.

His wife had given him a letter of license. She had ceased to love him. He made himself so disagreeable to Mrs. Bellenden by dinner-time that the meal was eaten in sullen silence; and the Magnum of Veuve Pommeroy was hardly enough for two, for when Mrs. Bellenden was in a rage her glass had to be filled very often, and the waiters at the smart hotels knew her ways. The waiters worshipped her. "She tips as handsome as she tipples," had been said of her by one of them.