"If Madam will leave it to us," said Myfanwy Jones, "we will give her satisfaction."

She took in all Aura's grace and beauty as she spoke. Full of shrewd sense, appreciative by virtue of her race, of all that makes for beauty, knowledgeable in all that enhances beauty, her bold dark eyes realised that here was some one worth dressing.

"We will--yes! we will make it of white velours-panne and dead white velvet. It will become Madam, I am sure. I will consult the buyer regarding the price."

She swept away over the Turkey carpets of Williams and Edwards' shop, her shiny, undulating black satin train rippling behind her, towards a tall, most immaculate figure in a long frock coat, who was busy comparing scraps of silk with another tall, broad-shouldered young man. Both might have entered a grenadier company and looked all too big and strong for their task.

"Excuse me, Mr. Morris," said Myfanwy, with the most superb courtesy, "but I should like to speak to Mr. Pugh for an instant." Having got him to herself, her manner changed.

"Merve!" she said sharply. "What price order costume, panne and velvet, my wedding-dress design--you know. I want to make it."

"For that lady?" he said, looking across to where Aura stood, feeling as she still felt in shops, utterly shy and miserable. In an instant a hot flush overspread his face, and he turned back to the silk patterns.

"Thirty guineas."

Myfanwy sniffed scornfully. "You will oblige me, Mervyn Pugh, by having some sense. Look at her! will she give more than fifteen guineas for a dress? Never! and I want to make it."

"Five-and-twenty," he said, refraining from the look. He would gladly have stuck to the thirty, and so have driven Aura from the shop, had he dared. But he did not dare. He was under Myfanwy's orders, and, so far, he had had no reason to regret the fact. He had climbed like Jonah's gourd, and was now Williams and Edwards' first buyer. And next year when, after his marriage with Myfanwy (who was now head of the costume department) the additional interest of making money for himself instead of for others had come in his life, and there could be no doubt of their success. He had all the Cymric's fine feelings for feminine fal-lals (which is shown indubitably by the names over the drapers' shops in London) and Myfanwy had a perfect genius for dress. Considering, therefore, the crowds of women absolutely without any taste at all who desire to dress well, the result was assured. He began to wonder how he had ever thought seriously of being a pedagogue, a demagogue, or a minister.

"I shall say twenty," remarked Myfanwy reflectively, "it can be made for fifteen, and she shall have it for that in the end. But I want to make it. She is lovely--and I want to know how I shall look in my wedding-dress."

"Twenty!" said Mervyn wavering.

"I hope it may buy her all she desires as my dress will buy me," contended Myfanwy, with a challenge of lip and eyes. "I will say eighteen, Mervyn, to begin with."

With that she swept back to Aura. "It will be eighteen guineas, Madam," she said sweetly; "but if Madam will give us the Mechlin scarf she is wearing to utilise, it will be fifteen."

Fifteen! It seemed enormous to Aura's ignorance. Yet Ted had given twelve, she knew, for the pink satin, and he had bidden her--since he was too busy to shop--be sure and get something very nice indeed for Ned Blackborough's dance on New Year's Eve. Fifteen whole sovereign remedies and fifteen shillings over! What an immense amount to spend upon herself, she who at best was but a poor maimed thing. Every now and again this feeling of being, as it were, a castaway, a derelict on Life's sea, would come to her, though she knew that millions of women, many from choice, went through the world and left their mark on it with never a child to call them mother. Still the sense of being, as it were, out of the fighting-line was at times oppressive. So few things seemed to matter; certainly not the spending of money.

"It will have to be ready by the 31st," she stipulated, and then she smiled as she invariably did when she remembered Ned Blackborough.

Myfanwy Jones took in the smile with critical shrewdness. Had she been asked, she would have said it was not exactly the smile of a married woman, although Aura had given her name as Mrs. Cruttenden.

What of that? Myfanwy's notions were decidedly broad, and if she could compass a good time, as she herself counted a good time, for this lovely girl, the lovely girl should have one.

"Miss Moore! Madam's measure!" she called in queenly fashion, and searched in her beaded-satchel--pockets would have disturbed the elegant set of her dress--for a pencil. It had slipped inside a folded paper, and as Myfanwy removed it, she smiled in her turn. For she had caught a glimpse of the writing and printing inside the paper.

"Miss Alicia Edwards," "Messrs. Williams and Edward," "per M. Jones."

Only that morning Myfanwy had paid the bill and received her commission on the sales; so there it was awaiting developments.

"If Madam will come for one fitting," suggested Myfanwy superbly. She was going to stake her reputation on this dress, and she meant not to lose it.

The result exceeded even her expectations.

Aura looked at herself in the long glass and then at Myfanwy, who, with infinite condescension, had insisted on seeing Madam dressed.

"What have you done to me?" she asked, "I don't know myself."

Was it the long, straight, brilliant, moonshiny folds that made her look so tall and slim? Was it the tiny, scarcely-seen silver threads outlining the flowing curves of dead-white velvet about the hem which made one think of moonlit clouds? Was it the cunningly devised drapery of lace which made the bodice seem a loose sheath to loveliness?

Myfanwy Jones looked at Aura with undisguised pity. "It is only that Madam is so seldom dressed; she is only clothed; but to-night she will be the best-dressed person in the rooms." She looked at her doll with a sphynx-like expression not without some malice in it. "If Madam will allow me," she said, and her deft fingers were in the bronze hair: "so--the shape of Madam's head is heavenly--and--and not the diamond brooch--the dress requires nothing but Madam's self. That is right! I trust Madam will enjoy herself."

Aura went downstairs to show herself to her husband, with a queer new feeling of power tingling in every vein. Why at two-and-twenty should she hold herself derelict? A ship need not always steer straight to the pole.

Ted had been extremely busy and rather irritable ever since she had returned; not irritable with her--he never was that--but distrait and careless. In a way it had been a relief, since it had given her time to try and adjust herself to her new outlook. She had not even spoken to him regarding that new outlook; she was almost doubting if she should. Her silence would, no doubt, be a bar to perfect confidence; but was such a thing as perfect confidence possible between two people so dissimilar as she and Ted? Perhaps it was better to drift on. Whither?

The question would come with a pang, sometimes bringing the thought that it might have been better if she and the little one--the little daughter they told her--had gone out hand in hand to wander in the "groves of asphodel." That was Ned's phrase; and with that would come another pang.

What would she do without Ned? He had been so kind. He had lent her books to read, he had taken her out in the motor, he had even talked of the dead baby almost as if he understood how dear a memory it had to be.

Ted looked at her from head to foot, and a slow smile crept over his good-looking sensible face.

"That is something like," he said. "By Jove! you look most awfully fetching! A little ice-bergy," he continued, bending to kiss the white shoulder above the Mechlin lace: "but--but that's your style. Only I wish you had more colour. If this 'biz' of mine comes off, we'll take a holiday somewhere--Monte Carlo, perhaps--the Hirsches are going there. Now we ought to be starting. You don't mind my dancing, do you dearest? I do wish you'd learn. It looks so odd your sitting out with the old fogies."

"I shall sit out with Ned," she replied lightly.

For the first time in her life Ted frowned at her. "It seems to me," he said quite nastily, "that you have done a lot of sitting-out with Ned lately. I don't half like it."

She stared at him, and all the way to New Park sat thinking of what he had said. Was it possible he was going to be jealous of her? Of her who had married him to get rid of the very possibility.

A ray of light from a gas-lamp lit up her face, and she found Ted's eyes fastened on her.

"You are most awfully fetching to-night--you look so jolly mysterious somehow," he said joyously, putting his cheek against hers. "Give me a kiss, wifelet."

She gave him one. She would have given him a dozen of the trivial things had he asked for them! Then she laid her hand on his.

"You weren't serious about Ned, were you?" she asked.

"Not--not altogether," he admitted with a smile; "but you can't be too careful, my child. People are the devil to talk. And you mustn't forget that he did want to marry you."

She must not forget! And all her efforts had been to forget it utterly. What a queer world it was!

"Here we are," said Ted cheerfully. "By Jove! Blackborough is doing it well!"

For once, indeed, New Park looked habitable. Ned, remembering the East, had had it illuminated in Indian fashion, and even the heavy-browed architraves and the stucco columns looked passable outlined by rows of little lamps. Great cressets blazed following the ground plan of the huge pile, the balustrades of the formal terraces shone in lines of light. The wide portico, carefully enclosed, was full of palms, and festooned with vines from which hung great clusters of grapes. Within, it was impossible to recognise the formal suites of rooms. They seemed to have vanished, taking with them all the stiff furniture, the gorgeous clogging carpets. In their places were airy pavilions, orange gardens, great groves of tall lilies. Money had been spent lavishly in getting rid of all traces of money. And in the centre of it all stood Ned Blackborough with Helen Tressilian, looking years younger, beside him, as she received congratulations on her approaching marriage, all the time keeping a watchful eye lest Peter Ramsay should weary after his recent illness; but he looked alert and keen as ever.

"A small and early, and you come at a quarter past nine!" said Ned, then paused, absolutely dazzled by the shiny folds, the moonlit clouds, the parted sheath of the bodice concealing surely the most beautiful thing in the world. His vagrant mind reverted on the instant with a quaint admixture of regret and exultation to the adornment he had ordered for the select supper-table at which Aura was to be entertained. This woman was beyond such simplicities as a little purple iris. For her, white roses, tuberoses, gardenias, stephanotis; all the deadly sweet white things in the world, even the poisonous dhatura!

"I have put my name down for some dances later on," he said, handing her a programme; "I shall be busy at first, but--let me see--Lord Scudamore, I am going to give you the honour of being presented to Mrs. Cruttenden. Remember, you are engaged to me for supper."

"Is that wise? What will they say?" asked Helen doubtfully, as Aura and her cavalier--a diplomatic-looking wearer of an immaculate dress-suit, with some sort of a ribbon across the shirt--moved off.

"They, my dear Helen, will by that time be envying me my good luck, at least all the men will, and I will tell the cavilling women she is a bride. Did you ever see such a fairly bewildering dress? She is the whole Dream of Fair Women rolled into one."

"Let us go into the Winter Palace. Have you seen it?" said Aura's diplomat, and she went with him nothing loth. Ten minutes afterwards, however, she complained of a draught, and left it somewhat hurriedly, she with fine flaming cheeks and he somewhat sulkily. That was the worse of rustics; they could not understand the most ordinary persiflage.

"Where would you like to sit? I am afraid I am engaged for this dance," he said icily.

"Oh I anywhere, I like to be alone," replied Aura.

It was not long her fate. Mr. Hirsch spied her out and bore down upon her, white waistcoat and all. His open admiration was almost a relief, mixed up as it was with still more boundless adoration of his daughter, who came flitting past in Ted's arms. They were too much absorbed in their waltz and their enjoyment of it to notice the sitters out, but Mr. Hirsch waxed enthusiastic over their appearance. They were a couple to be proud of, and he really was becoming quite proud of Ted, who promised to be a very rich man. He felt quite like a father towards him; he had indeed fathered him into the world of speculation, and--ha--ha--ha--then he waxed exceedingly hilarious--if Mr. Cruttenden hadn't been in such a terrible hurry to get married, who knows but what a family arrangement--she must excuse him, but really if she would look so superlatively beautiful she must expect the world to go crazy.

"What are you laughing at so loudly, papa?" asked Miss Hirsch, pulled up in the next round by her parent's laughter. "I'm sure he must be boring you terribly, Mrs. Cruttenden. And there is Mr. Leveson, papa, just dying to be introduced--he told me so just now--do go and fetch him. You'll find him awfully amusing, Mrs. Cruttenden, he has seen so much life."

He had seen too much for Aura. She came out from the conservatory white with anger. By this time half the men in the room were looking at her, and it was no longer any question of being alone. She was beginning to feel frightened, she looked vainly for Ted, but he having seen her, as he phrased it self-complacently, "well-started," was amusing himself. So, in the crush of smiling, flattering faces, she saw Ned Blackborough's, and caught almost convulsively at his arm, and his quiet decorous claim.

"Our dance, I think."

"Oh! Ned!" she said hurriedly, "do let us go to some quiet place where we can get away from everybody."

The suggestion was but too welcome. Free for a time from his duties as host, he cast all prudence to the winds. The sort of thing that had been going on was all very well, but it must end in the inevitable way. When she was happy, he might have been a fool. Now, he would not be one. It was not as if he would be doing Ted any real harm. If he was free of her he would be free to marry and have sons to inherit his money, he could even marry Miss Hirsch!

The library whither they escaped looked snug and comfortable, all untouched by the babel without. The reading lamp by the blazing fire; Ned's book as he had left it.

"This is nice," she said with a little shiver of satisfaction, and taking up the book crouched down in her usual fashion by the fire to see what it was.

Ned's pulses were bounding. It was all he could do to keep his voice steady.

"You oughtn't to do Cinderella in that lovely gown!" he said.

Aura looked at him critically. "I feel like Cinderella," she said. "I believe I want to go home before twelve; and I don't think I like the gown; it makes me something I never was before."

There was a silence. Ned Blackborough was telling himself he was a fool.

"I shall put out the light if you insist on trying to read a bad French novel instead of speaking to me," he said. "There!--" the click of the electric button sounded clear. "It's much nicer with the firelight. Give that thing to me."

"Bad French novel," she echoed. "Why do you read it if it is bad? I wouldn't."

"All people are not perfect," he said recklessly. "Most of us--except you--have a bad side. I often wonder what you would say if I were to show you mine?"

"You couldn't," she said softly.

He had literally to harden his heart before he could go on, and then he had to double back. "It--it isn't a bad book after all," he went on turning the leaves idly, "it is only real life. I'll tell you the story if you like. Of course it is about a woman, and a man, and--and a husband--the old story that is always cropping up in the world, so the book's no good." He threw it aside in sudden impulse upon the table, and knelt down beside her. "Aura," he said passionately, "you and I know the beginning of the story well. Why should we try and escape from the ending of it? Oh! for God's sake, child, don't look like that!"

She had sprung up and was glancing down at the white shimmering folds of her gown in absolute horror.

"It is the dress," she muttered. "It is not me--it is not you, Ned--oh Ned, it can't be you--it is the dress--I will go home--I must go home----"

"Aura!" he cried, but she eluded him and was out in the wide lit corridor ere he could even ask her to be calm--to forgive him--to forget. He glanced after her for a moment; then with a curse at himself closed the door and sat down moodily before the fire. What was the good?

Between the palms, the roses, the endless flowers and curtains of the corridor were many a cosy corner, many a prepared nook where men and women in the intervals between the dances sought seclusion and love-making, more or less casual according to the taste of the makers--and where passion, doubtless, had gone further than Ned's brief outburst.

"Hullo, Aura!" came her husband's voice as he issued from one of these corners with Miss Hirsch on his arm. "All alone! Why, what's up?"

The necessity for calm came to her. "I was looking for you," she said. "I want you to order the carriage for me. I'm feeling--not very well--and I shall be better at home--you see, as I don't dance." She looked helplessly at him wondering if she would be allowed to go.

"I'll take you home, of course, if you want to go," he said gloomily--"that is, if Miss Hirsch will excuse me." His regret for three more dances with the jolliest girl he had met for years was in his voice.

"Then I won't go," she began, "I couldn't spoil----"

"You are not looking a bit well," said Miss Hirsch kindly. "See! I'll take you to the ladies' room. Mr. Cruttenden, you might send her in a glass of champagne. Then you can have a quiet rest there, and go home later if you want to, but I expect you'll be all right by supper time."

She nodded knowingly to Ted and went off with Aura, bursting over with friendliness.

But, left alone in charge of a bevy of prim maids, with the untouched champagne before her, Aura's courage rose. She would do what she wanted to do. So, on her programme card she wrote a note to her husband using all the most consoling phrases she could think of--"Feeling a little bilious," was in itself sufficient to allay any anxiety--ended up with a cheerful--"I shall be asleep long ere you come home, please enjoy yourself," and leaving this to be given to him when he came to inquire, slipped away. The clocks were just striking half-past eleven when she paid the cabman at the gate. She had forgotten the latch-key, but, thank heaven, the servants were still up. It was New Year's Eve. Her thoughts flew back to Cwmfaernog, to the last New Year's Day when she had learnt so many things.

She was going to learn more now. She could not understand. She did not know what the world meant. She was going to see for herself once and for all.

As she thought this she was stripping off Myfanwy's creation.

"Enjoy herself!" She flung it into a corner almost with a cry, and the next minute stood in her white serge and the brown Tam-o'-Shanter. Mercifully some faint instinct of self-preservation made her muffle up the bronze beauty of her hair and hide some of the perfection of her face under a thick veil. The next instant she had carefully closed the front door again, and was hurrying away down the road towards the electric tram. They went till midnight; that would take her quickest to the heart of the great city. She had Ted's duplicate latch-key with her; she would try and be back before he returned.

Hitherto she had sought for the uttermost wisdom of nature amongst the everlasting hills--now she was going to seek the uttermost wisdom of man in his haunts.

"Hullo! Polly, my dear, ain't you comin' my side?" came a voice from the shadows over the way, but she was close to the tram lines now, and a car was coming along. It was full of holiday-makers singing, shouting, harmless enough, but over hilarious. Here there were more appeals to Polly (why perpetually Polly rather puzzled her) as she clung to a strap, until a jovial elderly man pulled her down on his knee. Whereat the whole car roared as if it were some exquisite joke. But they meant no harm; they were only just a little convivial.

The car stopped at the Cross, the centre of the great city, and she got out. It was a fine old Cross, weather-beaten, worn, bearing on its four sides beneath the soaring quaintly floreated Symbol of Salvation, four bas-reliefs of the Passion of the Master, the Scourging, the Mocking, the Cross-carrying, the Crucifying.

Beneath the latter Aura stood looking out with clear eyes at the conduct of Christendom. The radiating streets were all thronged; the late music-halls were belching out their crowds, the supper-rooms were preparing to close by turning out their guests. But the streets were not ready for bed.

What a crowd! Gaily dressed women of almost all types. Some painted, bedizened, unmistakable, others apeing them amused, uncertain, even faintly repelled. Men with every expression on their faces, from evil passion, through vulgarity, to contemptuous tolerance. Half-grown girls more outrageous than their elders, half-grown lads jostling, leering, raiding the pavement-walkers into the very street. The electric light danced and quivered, the moistened mud of a thousand footsteps sparkled and shone.

Where in all her midnight walks upon the hills had she seen a sight like to this?

As she stood, more than one offer of a drink fell on her ears; but she took no notice.

"If you ain't goin'," said a policeman familiarly, "you must move on. I can't 'ave you standin' doing nothin'."

So she quitted the shadow of the Crucifixion; but at the corner of the street also, it was still "move on," when she herself had failed to move on; so the next time the offer of a drink came she accepted it.

"Bully for you, my girl; come along," said the offerer, and they went across to a gin shop, the doors of which had never once been still; the flashing of their backwards and forward swing beating out the seconds with the regularity of a clock.

How bright it was! How full these last few minutes before twelve.

The offerer appraised his guest critically, "Sherry!" he ordered, "and the usual--now! my girl, drink it up sharp. The night's young for pleasure yet, but we shall have to turn out and find some other place."

Aura looked at him clearly; at the face, not bad in itself, but overlaid with sensuality.

"I am not going to drink," she said coldly. "I only came in to see--and I have seen."

She turned to go. Luckily for her, his torrent of obscene abuse was interrupted by a general exodus; for suddenly the Town Hall clock boomed, the church bells rang out, the old year passed, the new year began; began with shouts and curses and kisses and laughter. Some one struck up "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot," and a band of perfect strangers to each other, hand-clasped and feeling wildly at each end for further friendship, lurched across the street.

A Salvation lass, her face vivid with intent, clutched at Aura's arm. "Don't go with him, my girl--don't--he is the Devil--he is Sin incarnate--he is----"

"I am not going," answered Aura in a queer strained voice. "I am in school. I am learning. I want to see for myself."

"That was Eve's sin--you are lost--come--come with me."

The crowd jostled them apart, jostled Aura into the shadow of a narrow archway. More than one man's face looked into the shadow, spoke, then passed on with a jibe. The streets were beginning to empty; the crowd was dissolving into couples; men and women were hurrying away into the side streets. She must be going also.

"Hullo! you young devil! I have got you again, have I?" came a hoarse voice, and a hand clutched at her arm.

She wrenched it away, and looked for escape. Beside the low archway rose a flight of steps, above the steps a wider archway. A small door in it stood open. Scarcely thinking what she did, she sprang towards it, set aside a leathern curtain, and for the first time in her life found herself in a church. At least the man would not follow her here.

What a quaint little place! It was almost dark, but lights were burning, small twinkling lights set in the form of a star at the further end, and she went forward curiously. The chapel, for it was no more than that, was not quite empty. Here and there among the shadowy chairs some figure--generally two figures together--showed dimly.

It must be a Roman Catholic chapel, for that gracious woman's figure crowned with stars uplifted above the sanctuary doors with a child in her arms, must be the Blessed Mother.

Aura's heart leapt up to her. That she understood. And what was this at her gracious feet, beneath the five-pointed star of light?

That was the mother again kneeling in adoration before her new-born child, while the ox and the ass worshipped with wide, soft eyes, and the shepherds and the wise men thronged the door.

Aura knelt down before the crÊche, her eyes wide, soft as those of the beasts that perish. Here was peace. Here was perfection! No! not perfection, but the road to it. This was the solution of the horrors of human life outside, but beyond human life lay the life that was not human, the something better of her dreams.

A touch on her shoulder roused her. One of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, engaged in this rescue work, was beside her.

"Courage!" she said. "Courage! my sister! Our Blessed Lady will help you. Give up your sinful life."

Aura rose and looked at her simply. "I am not a bad woman," she said. "I--I don't think I ever could have been one. Now I know I couldn't." Then she flushed up. "I--I should like to give something," she continued, and thrusting her purse into the sister's hand, she turned and passed rapidly into the street again.

She had seen enough; she had learnt enough. Now to get home.

She would have taken one of the cabs, of which two or three still stood by the Cross, but she had no money. There were two pennies, it is true, in the pocket of her jacket, but the trams had ceased running for the night. There was nothing for it but to walk, and she had no idea of the way. Her two first experiences of asking it, one entailing immediate flight from insult, were not encouraging. So the clocks were chiming half-past three ere, utterly worn out, draggled beyond belief, she stood in the hall of her own house again, thankful to find from the darkness that Ted had not yet returned. He might be back any moment, however, so she must make haste and remove her garments. She flung them all soiled and stained with the grime of the city, on the top of Myfanwy Jones' creation, the beginning and the end together.

Then, as she stood in her white dressing-gown, she paused to listen. Was that a sound in Ted's study? Could he have come in already? come in without seeing how she was?

She went downstairs. There was a light beneath the door; she opened it.

The room seemed to her to be full of smoke, making all things in it unreal, almost fantastic. And was that her husband looming large, jovial, content through this new atmosphere? She shrank back from it.

"Hullo, little woman! Aura! I've such news for you. I've turned up trumps with a vengeance. I'm a hundred thousand pounds richer than I was yesterday. I found the telegram when I came home half an hour ago, and I've been dreaming ever since. Such dreams! You shall have the best time a woman ever had--frocks, jewels, everything--and by and by----"

"There may be no by and by," she said quickly. "Ted--oh Ted! be good to me."