‘Shall I do it high or low, ma’am?’

Marcia, who was sitting before the mirror in a lace camisole, fidgeted impatiently.

‘Oh, do it any way you please, Granton, only hurry—low, I think. That will look best with my gown. But do be quick about it. I have to go downstairs.’

‘There’s plenty of time,’ replied the maid, imperturbably. ‘But I would be a little faster if you would kindly sit still.’

‘Very well, Granton; I won’t move for five minute. I’m really getting excited, though; and I didn’t care a bit for the party until it began.’

‘Yes, ma’am. If you’ll just turn your head a little more this way. It’s very early.’

‘I know, but I have to go down and be sure that Pietro understands about the lights. He’s so stupid, he has to be watched every minute. And, Granton, as soon as you get through with Mrs. Copley please go and help Bianca dress Miss Royston. Bianca doesn’t know anything more about fixing hair than a rabbit.’

Granton’s silence breathed acquiescence in this statement, and under impulse of the implied compliment she became more sprightly in her movements as she skilfully twisted Marcia’s yellow-brown hair into a seemingly simple coil at the nape of her neck.

For the past three days the house had been full of guests and though Marcia had been somewhat cold in her anticipations of the time, she found herself thoroughly enjoying it when it came. The days had been filled with rides and drives and impromptu gaiety. Paul Dessart had been master of the revels, and he filled the office brilliantly. He had supplied the leaven of fun on every occasion, and had been so thoroughly tactful that his host and hostess had gratefully blessed him, and Marcia had cast him more than one involuntary glance of approval. And this was her birthday and the night of the ball. All day long she had been the centre of a congratulatory group, the recipient of prettily worded felicitations; and she not unnaturally found it pleasant. The afternoon train had brought still more guests from Rome, and Villa Vivalanti’s nineteen bedrooms were none too many. Five o’clock tea on the terrace had in itself been in the nature of a festa, with gaily dressed groups coming and going amid the sound of laughter and low voices; while the excitable Italian servants scurried to and fro, placing tea-tables and carrying cups.

Marcia had been secretly disappointed that afternoon by the non-arrival of one guest whom she had half expected—and Eleanor Royston had been frankly so.

‘Mr. Copley,’ Eleanor had inquired of her host, as he offered her a cup of tea, ‘where’s that friend of yours, Mr. Laurence Sybert?’

‘Quelling rioters, I presume. It’s more in his line just now than attending balls.’

‘As if anything could be more in a diplomat’s line than attending balls! With all the other diplomats here and off their guard, it’s just the time to learn state secrets. And he’s the most interesting man in Rome,’ she complained. ‘I wanted to add him to my collection.’

‘Your collection?’ Mr. Copley’s startled expression approached a stare.

‘Of interesting men,’ she explained. ‘Oh, don’t be alarmed; I don’t scalp them. The collection is purely mental—it’s small enough, so far, to be carried in my head. It’s merely that I am a student of human nature and am constantly on the alert for fresh specimens. Your Mr. Sybert is puzzling; I don’t know just how to classify him.’

‘Ah, I see! It is merely a scientific interest you take in him.’ Mr. Copley’s tone was one of relief. ‘If I can be of any assistance with the label—I am sure that he would feel honoured to grace your collection.’

‘I am not so sure,’ said Marcia. ‘Wait till you hear the others, Uncle Howard! A Kansas politician who wants to be a poet, an engineer on the Claytons’ yacht, a Russian prince who talks seven languages and can’t express his thoughts in any, and—who were the others, Eleanor? Oh, yes! the blacksmith who married the maid and beats her.’

‘You don’t do them justice,’ Eleanor remonstrated, ‘Those are merely their accidental, extrinsic qualities. That which makes them interesting is something intrinsic.’

Mr. Copley shot her an amused glance, and drawing up a chair, sat down beside her, prepared to argue it out.

‘The list has possibilities, Miss Royston,’ he assured her, ‘though of course one can’t judge without knowing the gentlemen personally. With which one, may I ask, are you going to classify Mr. Sybert?’

‘Oh, in a separate pigeonhole by himself. That is just what makes my collection interesting.’ It was evidently a subject that she discussed with some relish. ‘Most men, you know—you look them over and immediately assign them to a group with a lot of others; but once in a while you come across a man who goes entirely by himself—is what the French call an original—and he is worth studying.’

Mr. Copley took out a cigarette and regarded it speculatively. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘The best study of mankind is man—and so you think Sybert a specimen who deserves a pigeonhole by himself?’

‘Yes, I think he does, though I haven’t quite decided on the hole yet. That’s why it worries me that he didn’t come to the party. One hates to leave these little matters unsolved.’

‘I am sincerely sorry for you to have lost the opportunity. I must tell him your opinion.’

‘No, indeed!’ remonstrated Eleanor. ‘I may meet him again some day, and if you tell him I shall never learn the truth. One’s only chance is to catch them unawares.’

‘You’re a very penetrating person, Miss Royston.’

‘I’ve been out nine seasons,’ she laughed. ‘You can trust me to know a man when I see one!’

‘I wish you’d teach Marcia some of your lore,’ he murmured, as he turned toward the loggia to greet a fresh carriageful of guests.

Even though one man were missing, still a great many others were there, and it had only been an undercurrent of Marcia’s consciousness in any case that had considered the matter. The laughter and babel of voices, the gay preparations and hurrying servants, had had their effect. As Granton clasped about her neck Mr. Copley’s expiatory gift—a copy of an old Etruscan necklace in pearls and uncut emeralds set in hammered gold—she was as pleasurably excited as a young woman may legitimately be on the eve of a birthday ball.

‘There, Granton; that’s all,’ she cried, catching up her very Parisian skirts and flying for the door. ‘Hurry with the others, please, for it won’t be long before the guests begin coming.’

She started downstairs, pulling on her gloves as she went. She paused a moment on the landing to view the scene below, and she blinked once or twice as it dawned upon her that Laurence Sybert was standing at the foot of the stairs watching her, just as he had stood the last time she had seen him when he bade her good-night. For a moment she felt an absurd tremor run through her, and then with something like a gulp she collected herself and went on down to greet him.

‘Mr. Sybert! We were afraid you weren’t coming. When did you get here?’

‘On the late train. I have been in the south, and I didn’t get back to the city till this afternoon.’

‘Your arrivals are always so spectacular,’ she said. ‘We entirely give you up, and then the first thing we know you are quietly standing before us on the rug.’

‘I should call that the reverse of spectacular.’

‘Have you seen Uncle Howard? Did they find any place to put you? The house is cram full.’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve been officially welcomed. I have a bed in your uncle’s dressing-room.’

‘You may be thankful for that. The next comer, I am afraid, will be put in the cellar.’

Sybert did not choose to prolong these amenities of welcome any further, and he stood quietly watching her while she buttoned her gloves. She looked very radiant to-night, with the candle-light gleaming on her hair and her hazel eyes shining with excitement. Her gown was the filmiest, shimmering white with an undertone of green. About her neck the pearls gleamed whitely, each separate jewel a pulsing globe of light. Marcia glanced up and touched the necklace with her hand.

‘This is Uncle Howard’s birthday present,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it lovely? It’s a copy of an old, old necklace in Castellani’s collection. My uncle gives me pearls, and my father is sending wheat.’

She turned aside into the long salon, and Sybert followed her. If Marcia had been momentarily jostled from her self-possession by his sudden appearance, she had completely regained her poise. She was buoyantly at her ease again. There was a touch of intimacy, almost of coquetry, about her manner as she talked; and yet—Sybert noted the fact with a sub-smile of comprehension—she avoided crossing eyes with him. That moment by the fireside was still too vivid. They returned to the hall, and Marcia stepped to the door leading on to the loggia. The cornice was outlined with tiny coloured lamps, while a man was lighting others by the terrace balustrade. She glanced back at Sybert, who was standing still in the hall.

‘You aren’t going out?’ he asked.

‘Just a moment. I want to see how it looks.’

He looked at her bare shoulders with a slight frown. ‘Bring the signorina a wrap,’ he said to the servant at the door.

‘I don’t need a wrap,’ said Marcia; ‘it’s a warm night.’

Sybert shook his head with an expression that was familiar.

‘Oh, if you wish to say anything, say it!’ she cried. ‘Only please don’t look at me with that smile. It’s the way you looked the first time I saw you—and I don’t like it.’

‘I have nothing to say. When a young woman threatened with malaria proposes to go out into an Italian night, bare-shouldered, a mere man is left speechless.’

‘Pride would keep me warm.’

‘I haven’t a doubt of it; but in case it should for the moment fail——’ He took the long white cloak from the man’s arm and glanced at it with another expression as he placed it on her shoulders. It was composed mostly of chiffon and lace.

‘All is vanity that comes from a Paris shop!’ laughed Marcia.

Sybert lit a cigarette and followed her. ‘Well?’ he asked, as they paused by the terrace balustrade. ‘Does it meet with your approval?’

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ she replied as she looked back at the broad, white faÇade with its gleaming windows. There was no moon, but a clear, star-sprinkled sky. In all the dark landscape the villa alone was a throbbing centre of life and light. Rows of coloured lanterns were beginning to outline the avenue leading to the gate, and in the ilex grove tiny red and blue and white bulbs glowed among the branches like the blossoms of some tropical night-blooming cereus. Servants were hurrying past the windows, musicians were commencing to tune their instruments; everywhere was the excitement of preparation.

‘And this is your birthday,’ he said. ‘I suppose you have received many pretty speeches to-day, Miss Marcia; I hope they may all come true.’ She glanced up in his face, and he looked down with a smile. ‘Twenty-three is a great age!’

A shadow flitted across her face. ‘Isn’t it?’ she sighed. ‘I thought twenty-two was bad enough—but twenty-three! It won’t be many years before I’ll be really getting old.’

Sybert laughed. ‘It’s been a long time since I saw twenty-three—when I first came back to Rome.’

‘Twelve years,’ said Marcia.

‘It’s an easy enough problem if you care to work it out. I don’t care to, any more.’

‘It’s not bad for a man,’ she said; ‘but a woman grows old so young!’

‘You need not worry over that just now. The grey hairs will not come for some time yet.’

‘I’m not worrying,’ she laughed. ‘I was just thinking—it isn’t nice to grow old, is it?’

‘Certainly not. It’s the great tragedy of life; and it comes to all, Miss Marcia—to you as well as to the poorest peasant girl in Castel Vivalanti. Life, after all, contains some justice.’

Marcia turned her back to the shining villa and looked down over the great Campagna stretching away darkly under the stars, with here and there the gleam of a shepherd’s fire, built to ward off the poison in the air.

‘Things are not very just,’ she said slowly.

‘Not very,’ he agreed; ‘and one has little faith that they ever will be—either in this world or the next.’

‘It would be comfortable, wouldn’t it, if you could only believe that people are unfortunate as a punishment—because they deserve to be.’

‘It would be a beautiful belief, but one which you can scarcely hold in Italy.’

‘Poor Italy!’ she sighed.

‘Ah—poor Italy!’ he echoed.

With a sudden motion he threw away his cigarette over the balustrade and immediately lit another. Marcia watched his face in the flare of the match. The eyes seemed deeper-set than usual, the jaw more boldly marked, and there were nervous lines about the mouth. His face seemed to have grown thinner in the last few weeks.

They turned away and sauntered toward the ilex grove.

‘There are, however, compensations,’ he went on presently. ‘Our poor peasants do not have all the pleasures, but they do not have all the pains, either. There are a great many girls in Castel Vivalanti who will never have a birthday ball’—he glanced from the lighted villa behind them to the glowing vista in front, the green stretch of the ilex walk with the shimmering fountain at the end—‘whose lives will be very bare, indeed. They will work and eat and sleep, and love and perhaps hate, and that is all. You have many other pleasures which they could never understand. You enjoy the Egoist, for instance. But also’—he paused—‘you can suffer many things they cannot understand. You are an individual, while they are merely human beings. Gervasio’s stepmother married a husband, and doubtless loved him very much and cried for him a week after he was dead. Then she married another, and saw no difference between him and the first. She may have to work hard, and she may be hungry sometimes, but she will escape the worst suffering in life, which you, with all your privileges, may not escape, Marcia.’

‘One would rather not escape it,’ she answered. ‘I should rather feel what there is to feel.’

‘Ah!’ he breathed, ‘so should we all! And these poor devils of peasants, who can’t feel anything but their hunger and weariness, lose the most of life. They are not even human beings; they are merely beasts of burden, hard-working, patient, unthinking oxen, who go the way they are driven, not dreaming of their strength. That is the unfairness; that is where society owes them a debt; they have no chance to develop. However,’ he broke off with a short laugh, ‘it’s not the time to bother you with other people’s troubles—on your birthday night. We will hope, after all, that you may not have any very grave ones of your own.’

They had reached the fountain and they paused. They were alone in a fairy grove, with a nightingale pouring out his soul in the branches above their heads. Marcia stood looking down the dim, green alley they had come by, breathing deeply. She knew that Sybert’s eyes were on her, and slowly she raised her head and looked up in his face. For a moment they stood in silence; then, as the sound of carriage wheels reached them from the avenue, she started and turned away.

‘The people are beginning to come. I am afraid that Aunt Katherine will be wondering where I am,’ she said in a voice that trembled slightly.

Sybert followed her in silence.

Some one had once said to her that Sybert’s silences meant more than other men’s words, and as they turned back she tried to think who it had been. Ah—she remembered! It was the contessa.