"Now be reasonable Tims. You can be if you choose."

Mildred was perched on a high stool in Tims's Chambers, breathing spring from a bunch of fresh Neapolitan violets, grown by an elderly admirer of hers, and wearing her black, winter toque and dress with that invincible air of smartness which she contrived to impart to the oldest clothes, provided they were of her own choosing. Tims, who from her face and attitude might have been taken for a victim of some extreme and secret torture, crouched, balancing herself on the top rail of her fender. She replied only by a horrible groan.

"Who do you suppose is the happier when Milly comes back?" continued Mildred.

"Well—the brat."

"Tony? He doesn't even know when she's there; but by the time she's done with him he's unnaturally good. He can't like that, can he?"

"Then there's Ian, good old boy!"

"That's humbug. You know it is."

"But it's Milly herself I really care about," cried Tims. "You've been a pig to her, Mil. She says you're a devil, and if I weren't a scientific woman I swear I should begin to believe there was something in it."

"No, Tims, dear," returned Mildred with earnestness. "I'm neither a pig nor a devil." She paused. "Sometimes I think I've lived before, some quite different life from this. But I suppose you'll say that's all nonsense."

"Of course it is—rot," commented Tims, sternly. "You're a physiological freak, that's what you are. You're nothing but Milly all the time, and you ought to be decent to her."

"I don't want to hurt her anyhow," apologized Mildred; "but you see when I'm only half there—well, I am only half there. I'm awfully rudimentary and I can't grasp anything except that I'm being choked, squeezed out of existence, and that I must make a fight for my life. Any woman becomes rudimentary who is fighting for her life against another woman; only I've more excuse for it, because as a scientist you must see that I can only be in very partial possession of my brain."

Tims had pulled her wig down over her eyes and glared at space. "That's all very well for you," she said; "but why should I help you to kill poor old M.?"

"Do try and understand! Every time she comes back she's more and more miserable; and that's not cheerful for Ian either, is it? Now, through that underhand trick of rudimentary Me—you see I don't try to hide my horrid ways—she knows Ian adores me and, comparatively speaking, doesn't care two straws about her. That will make her more miserable than she has ever been before. She'll only want to live so that I mayn't."

"I don't see how Ian's going to get on without her. You don't do much for him, my girl, except spend his money."

"Of course, that's quite true. I'm not in the least suited to Ian or his life or his income; but that's not my fault. How perverse men are! Always in love with the wrong women, aren't they?"

Tims's countenance relaxed and she replied with a slight air of importance:

"My opinion of men has been screwed up a peg lately. Every now and then you do find one who's got too much sense for any rot of that kind."

Mildred continued.

"Ian's perfectly wretched at what happened; can't understand it, of course. He doesn't say much, but I can see he dreads explanations with Milly. He's good at reserve, but no good at lies, poor old dear, and just think of all the straight questions she'll ask him! It'll be torture to both of them. Poor Milly! I've no patience with her. Why should she want to live? Life's no pleasure to her. She's known a long time that Tony's really jollier and better with me, and now she knows Ian doesn't want her. How can you pretend to think Milly happy, Tims? Hasn't she said things to you?"

"Yes," groaned Tims. "Poor old M.! She's pretty well down on her luck, you bet."

"And I enjoy every minute of my life, although I could find plenty to grumble at if I liked. Listen to me, Tims. How would it be to strike a bargain? Let me go on without any upsets from Milly until I'm forty. I'm sure I sha'n't care what happens to me at forty. Then Milly may have everything her own way. What would it matter to her? She likes to take time by the forelock and behaves already as though she were forty. I feel sure you could help me to keep her quiet if only you chose."

"If I chose to meddle at all, I should be much more likely to help her to come back," returned Tims, getting snappish.

"Alas! I fear you would, Tims, dear, in spite of knowing it would only make her miserable. That shows, doesn't it, how unreasonable even a distinguished scientific woman can be?"

This aspersion on Tims's reasoning powers had to be resented and the resentment to be soothed. And the soothing was so effectually done that Tims owned to herself afterwards there was some excuse for Ian's infatuation.

But Tims had no desire to meddle, and the months passed by without any symptoms of the change appearing. It seemed as if Mildred's hold upon life had never been so firm, the power of her personality never so fully developed. She belonged to a large family which in all its branches had a trick of throwing up successful men and brilliant women. But in reaction against Scottish clannishness, it held little together, and in the two houses whence Mildred was launched on her London career, she had no nursery reputation of Milly's with which to contend.

One of these houses was that of her cousin, Sir Cyril Meres, a fashionable painter with a considerable gift for art, and more for success—success social and financial. His beautiful house, stored with wonderful collections, had a reputation, and was frequented by every one of distinction in the artistic or intellectual world—by those of the world of wealth and rank who were interested in such matters, and the yet larger number who affected to be interested in them. For those Anglo-Saxon deities, Mammon and Snobbery, who have since conquered the whole civilized globe, had temporarily fallen back for a fresh spring, and in the eighties and early nineties Culture was reckoned very nearly as chic as motoring in the first years of the new century.

Several painters of various degrees of talent attempted to fix on canvas the extraordinary charm of Mrs. Stewart's appearance. Not one of them succeeded; but the peculiar shade of her hair, the low forehead and delicate line of the dark eyebrows, the outline of the mask, sometimes admired, sometimes criticised, made her portrait always recognized, whether simpering as a chocolate-box classicality, smiling sadly from the flowery circle of the Purgatorio, or breaking out of some rough mass of paint with the provocative leer of a cocotte of the Quartier Latin.

The magnetism of her personality defied analysis, as her essential beauty defied the painter's art. It was a magnetism which surrounded her with an atmosphere of adorations, admirations, enmities—all equally violent and irrational. Her wit had little to do with the making of her enemies, because it was never used in offence against friends or even harmless acquaintances; only against her foes she employed it with the efficiency and mercilessness of a red Indian wielding the tomahawk.

The other family where she found her niche awaiting her was of a different order. It was that of the retired Indian judge, Sir John Ireton, whose wife had chaperoned her through a Commemoration the summer she had taken her First in Greats. Ireton was not only in Parliament, but his house was a meeting-place where politicians cemented personal ties and plotted party moves. Milly in her brief appearances, had been of use to Lady Ireton, but Mildred proved socially invaluable. There were serious persons who suspected Mrs. Stewart of approaching politics in a flippant spirit; but on certain days she had revealed a grave and ardent belief in the dogmas of the party and a piety of attitude towards the person of its great apostle, which had convinced them that she was not really cynical or frivolous.

Lady Augusta Goring was the most important conquest of the kind Milly had made. She was the only child of the Marquis of Ipswich, and one of those rather stupid people whose energy of mind and character is often mistaken by themselves and others for cleverness. Lady Augusta was handsome in a dull, massive way, and so conscientious that she had seldom time to smile. Her friends said she would smile oftener if her husband caused her less anxiety; but considering who George Goring was and how he had been brought up, he might have been much worse. Where women were concerned, scandal had never accused him of anything more flagrant than dubious flirtations. It was his political intrigues, constantly threatening unholy liaisons in the most unthinkable directions; his sudden fits of obstinate idleness, often occurring at the very moment when some clever and promising political scheme of his own was ripe for execution, which so unendurably harassed the staid Marquis and the earnest Lady Augusta. They were highly irritating, too, to Sir John Ireton, who had believed himself at one time able to tame and tutor the tricksy young politician.

The late Lord Ipswich had been a "sport" in the Barthop family; a black sheep, but clever, and a well known collector. Accidental circumstances had greatly enriched him, and as he detested his brother and successor, he had left his pictures to the nation and all of his fortune which he could dispose of—which happened to be the bulk—to his natural son, George Goring. But his will had not been found for some weeks after his death, and while the present Marquis had believed himself the inheritor of the whole property, he had treated the nameless and penniless child of his brother with perfect delicacy and generosity. When George Goring found himself made rich at the expense of his uncle, he proposed to his cousin Lady Augusta and was accepted.

Mildred was partly amused and partly bored to discover herself on so friendly a footing with Lady Augusta. Putting herself into that passive frame of mind in which revelations of Milly's past actions were most often vouchsafed to her, she saw herself type-writing in a small, high-ceilinged room looking out on a foggy London park, and Lady Augusta seated at a neighboring table, surrounded by papers. Type-writing was not then so common as it is now, and Milly had learned the art in order to give assistance to Ian. Mildred was annoyed to find herself in danger of having to waste her time in a mechanical occupation which she detested, or else of offending a woman whom her uncle valued as a friend and political ally.

It was a slight compensation to receive an invitation to accompany the Iretons to a great ball at Ipswich House. There was no question of Ian accompanying her. He was usually too tired to care for going out in the evening and went only to official dinners and to the houses of old friends, or of people with whom he had educational connections. It did not occur to him that it might be wise to put a strain upon himself sometimes, to lay by his spectacles, straighten his back, have his beard trimmed and appear at Mildred's side in the drawing-rooms where she shone, looking what he was—a husband of whom she had reason to be proud. More and more engrossed by his own work and responsibilities, he let her drift into a life quite apart from his, content to see her world from his own fireside, in the sparkling mirror of her talk.

Ipswich House was a great house, if of little architectural merit, and the ball had all the traditional spectacular splendor common to such festivities. The pillared hall and double staircase, the suites of spacious rooms, were filled with a glittering kaleidoscopic crowd of fair and magnificently bejewelled women and presumably brave, certainly well-groomed and handsome men. The excellence of the music, the masses of flowers, the number of great names and well-advertised society beauties present, would subsequently provide material for long and eulogistic paragraphs in the half-penny press and the Ladies' Weeklies.

Mildred enjoyed it as a spectacle rather than as a ball, for she knew few people there, and the young political men whom she had met at her uncle's parties were too much engaged with ladies of more importance, to whom they were related or to whom they owed social attention, to write their names more than once on her programme. One of these, however, asked her if she had noticed how harassed both Lord Ipswich and Lady Augusta looked. Goring's speech, he said, at the Fothering by-election was reported and commented upon in all the papers, and had given tremendous offence to the leaders of his party; while the fact that he had not turned up in time for the ball must be an additional cross to his wife, who made such a firm stand against the social separation of married couples.

When Mildred returned to her uncle she found him the centre of a group of eminent politicians, all denouncing in more or less subdued tones the outrageous utterances and conduct of Goring, and most declaring that only consideration for Lord Ipswich and Lady Augusta prevented them from publicly excommunicating the hardened offender. Others, however, while admitting the outrage, urged that he was too brilliant a young man to be lightly thrown away, and advised patience, combined with the disciplinary rod. Sir John was of the excommunicatory party. Later in the evening he disappeared into some remote smoking or card-room, not so much forgetting his niece as taking it for granted that she was, as usual, surrounded by friends and admirers of both sexes. But a detached personality, however brilliant, is apt to be submerged in such a crowd of social eminences, bound together by ties of blood, of interests, and of habit, as filled the salons of Ipswich House. Mildred walked around the show contentedly enough for a time, receiving a smile here and a pleasant word there from such of her acquaintances as she chanced upon, but practically alone. And being alone, she found herself yielding to a vulgar envy of richer women's clothes and jewels. Her dress, with which she had been pleased, looked ordinary beside the creations of great Parisian ateliers, and the few old paste ornaments which were the only jewels she possessed, charming as they were, seemed dim and scant among the crowns and constellations of diamonds that surrounded her. Her pride rebelled against this envy, but could not conquer it.

More gnawing pangs, however, assailed her presently, the pangs of hunger; and no one offered to take her in to supper. The idea of taking herself in was revolting; she preferred starvation. But where could Uncle John have hidden himself? She sought the elderly truant with all the suppressed annoyance of a chaperon seeking an inconsiderate flirt of a girl. And it happened that a spirit in her feet led her to the door of a small room in which Milly and Lady Augusta had been wont to transact their business. A curious feeling of familiarity, of physical habit, caused her to open the big mahogany door. There was no air of public festivity about the room, which was furnished with a substantial, almost shabby masculine comfort. But oh, tantalizing spectacle! Under the illumination of a tall, crimson-shaded, standard lamp, stood a little, white-covered table, reminding her irresistibly of a little table in a fairy story, which the due incantation causes to rise out of the ground. A small silver-gilt tureen of soup smoked upon it and a little pile of delicate rolls lay beside the plate set for one. But alas! she might not, like the favored girl in the fairy story, proceed without ceremony to satisfy her hunger at the mysterious little table.

A door immediately opposite that of the small sitting-room opened noiselessly, and a young man entered with a light, quick step. He saw Mildred, but for a second or so she did not see him. He was at her side when she looked around and their eyes met. They had never seen each other before, but at that meeting of the eyes a curious feeling, such as two Europeans might experience, meeting in the heart of some dark continent, affected them both.

There was something picturesque about the young man's appearance, in spite of the impeccable cut and finish of his dress-suit and the waxed ends of his small blond mustache. His hair was of a ruddy nut-brown color, and had a wave in it; his bright hazel eyes seemed exactly to match it. His face had a fine warm pallor, and his under lip, which with his chin was somewhat thrust forward, was redder than the lip of a child. It was perhaps this noticeable coloring and something in his port which made him, in spite of the correct modernity of his dress, suggest some seventeenth-century portrait.

"Forgive my passing you," he said, at length; "but I'm starving."

"So am I," she returned, hardly aware of what she was saying. Some strange, almost hypnotic attraction seemed to rivet her whole attention on the mere phenomenon of this man.

"By Jove! Aren't they feeding the multitude down there?" he asked, nodding in the direction of the supper-room.

"Of course," she answered, with the simple gravity of a child, her blue eyes still fixed upon him. "But I can't ask for supper for myself, can I?"

Her need was distinctly material; yet the young man confronting her white grace, the strange look in her blue eyes, had a dreamlike feeling, almost as though he had met a dryad or an Undine between two of the prosaic, substantial doors of Ipswich House. And as in a dream the most extraordinary things seem familiar and expected, so the apparition of the Undine and her confidence in him seemed familiar, in fact just what he had been expecting during those hours of fog off the Goodwins, when the sirens, wild voices gathering up from all the seas of the world, had been screaming to each other across the hidden waters. That same inner concentration upon the mere phenomenon of a presence, an existence, which had given the childlike note to Mildred's speech, froze a compliment upon his lips; and they stood silent, eying each other gravely. A junior footman appeared, carrying a bottle of champagne in a bucket, and the young man addressed him in a vague, distracted tone, very unlike his usual manner.

"Look here, Arthur, here's a lady who can't get any supper."

The footman went quite pink at this personal reproach. He happened to have heard some one surmise, on seeing Mildred roaming about alone, that she was a newspaper woman.

"Please sir," he replied, "I don't know how it's happened, for her Ladyship told Mr. Mackintosh to be sure and see as the newspaper ladies and gentlemen were well looked after, and he thought as they'd all had supper."

It seemed incredible that Mildred should not have heard this reply, uttered so close to her; but though it fell upon her ears it did not penetrate to her mind.

"Bring up supper for two, Arthur," said Goring, in his usual decisive tone. "That'll do, won't it?" he added, and turned to Mildred, ushering her into the room. "You'll have supper with me, I hope? My name's Goring; I'm Lord Ipswich's son-in-law and I live in his house; so you see it's all right."

The corollary was not evident; but the mention of the name brought Mildred back to the ordinary world. So this was George Goring, the plague of his political party, the fly in the ointment of a respectable Marquis and his distinguished daughter. She had not fancied him like this. For one thing, she did not know him to be younger than his wife, and between the careworn solidity of Lady Augusta and this vivid restless personality, the five actual years of difference seemed stretched to ten.

"I'm convinced it's all right, Mr. Goring," she replied, throwing herself into a chair and smiling at him sparklingly. "It must be all right. I want my supper so much I should have to accept your invitation even if you were a burglar."

Goring, whose habit it was to keep moving, laughed as he walked about, one hand in his trousers pocket.

"Why shouldn't I be a burglar? A burglar, with an assistant disguised as a footman, sacking the bedrooms of Lord Ipswich's house while the ball proceeds? There's copy for you! Shall I do it? 'Mr. George Goring's Celebrated Black Pearls Stolen,' would make a capital head-line. Perhaps you've heard I'd do anything to keep my name in the newspapers."

"It certainly gets there pretty often," returned Mildred, politely; "and whenever it's mentioned it has an enlivening effect."

The footman had reappeared and they were unfolding their dinner-napkins, sitting opposite each other at the little table.

"As how, enlivening?"

"Like a bit of bread dropped into a glass of flat champagne."

"You think my party's like champagne? Why, it couldn't exist for a moment if it sparkled."

"I was talking of newspapers, not of your party; though there's no doubt you do enliven that."

"Do I? Like what? No odiously inoffensive comparisons, if you please."

"Well, I have heard people say like—like a blister on the back of the neck."

Goring laughed. "Thanks. That's better."

"The patient's using language, but he won't really tear it off, because he knows that would hurt him more, and the blister will do him good in the end, if he bears with it."

"But there's the blister's side to it, too. It's infernally tiring for a blister to be sticking on to such a fellow everlastingly. It'll fly off of itself before long, if he doesn't look out. Hullo! What am I saying? I suppose you'll have all this out in some confounded paper—'The Rebel Member Returns. A Chat with Mr. Goring'—Don't do that; but I'll give you some other copy if you like."

"You're very kind in giving me all this copy. What shall I do with it? Shall I keep it as a memento?"

"No, no. You can sell it; honor bright you can."

"Can I? Shall I get much for it? Enough money to buy me a tiara, do you think?"

"Do you really want to wear the usual fender? Now, why? I suppose because you aren't sufficiently aware how—" he paused on the edge of a compliment which seemed suddenly too full-flavored and ordinary to be addressed to this strangely lovely being, with her smile at once so sparkling and so mysterious. He substituted: "How much more distinguished it is to look like an Undine than like a peeress."

Mildred seemed slightly taken aback.

"Why do you say 'Undine?'" she asked, almost sharply. "Do I—do I look as if I came out of a Trafalgar Square fountain with fell designs on Lord Ipswich?"

"Of course not. But—I can't exactly define even to myself what I mean, only you do suggest an Undine to me. To some one else you might be simply Miss—Forgive me, I don't know your name."

He had not even troubled to glance at her left hand, and when the "Mrs." was uttered it affected him oddly. It was one of the peculiar differences between her two personalities that, casually encountered, Mildred was as seldom taken for a married woman as Milly for an unmarried one.

"Do I look as if I'd got no soul?" she persisted, leaning a little towards him, an intensity that might almost have been called anxiety in her gaze.

He could even have fancied she had grown paler. He, too, became serious. His eyes brightened, meeting hers, and a slight color came into his cheeks.

"Quite the contrary," he answered. "I should say you had a great deal—in fact, I shall begin to believe in detachable souls again. Fancy most people as just souls, without trimmings. It makes one laugh. But your body looks like an emanation from the spirit; as though it might flow away in a white waterfall or go up in a white fire; and as though, if it did, your soul could certainly precipitate another body, which must certainly be like this one, because it would be as this is, the material expression of a spirit."

She listened as he spoke, seriously, her eyes on his. But when he had done, she dropped her chin on her hand and laughed delightedly.

"You think I should be able to grow a fresh body, like a lobster growing a fresh claw? What fun!"

There was a sound without, not of the footman struggling with dishes and plates and the door-handle, but of middle-aged voices.

Instinctively Goring and Mildred straightened themselves and looked polite. Lord Ipswich and Sir John Ireton, deep in political converse, came slowly in and then stopped short in surprise. Mildred lost not a moment in carrying the war into their country. She turned about and addressed her uncle in a playful tone, which yet smacked of reproof.

"Here you are at last, Uncle John! I thought you'd forgotten all about me. I've been walking miles in mad pursuit of you, till I was so tired and hungry I think I should have dropped if Mr. Goring hadn't taken pity upon me and made me eat his supper."

Sir John defended himself, and Lord Ipswich was shocked to think that a lady had been in such distress in his house; although the apparition of Goring prevented him from feeling it as acutely as he would otherwise have done. His pleasant pink face took on an expression of severity as he responded to his son-in-law's somewhat too cheerful greeting.

"Sorry to be so late, but we were held up by a fog at the mouth of the Thames."

"It must have been very important business to take you all the way to Brussels so suddenly."

"It certainly wouldn't wait. I heard there was a whole set of Beauvais tapestries to be had for a mere song. I couldn't buy them without seeing them you know, and the big London and Paris dealers were bound to chip in if I didn't settle the matter pretty quick. I'm precious glad I did, for they're the finest pieces I ever saw and would have fetched five times what I gave for them at Christie's."

"Ah—really!" was all Lord Ipswich's response, coldly uttered and accompanied by a smile more sarcastic than often visited his neat and kindly lips. Sir John Ireton and Mildred, aware of the delicate situation, partly domestic and partly political, upon which they were intruding, took themselves away and were presently rolling through the empty streets in the gray light of early morning.