e each other again, of course!" she exclaimed,
retaining his hand. "You will come again soon?"

"Certainly I will."

"And your address--let me have your address----"

He breathed deeply in the open air. Glancing back at the house when he
had crossed the street, he saw a white hand waved to him at a window;
it hurried his step.

On the following day, Mrs. Florio visited her friend Miss Bonnicastle,
who had some time since exchanged the old quarters in Great Portland
Street for a house in Pimlico, where there was a larger studio
(workshop, as she preferred to call it), hung about with her own and
other people's designs. The artist of the poster was full as ever of
vitality and of good-nature, but her humour had not quite the old
spice; a stickler for decorum would have said that she was decidedly
improved, that she had grown more womanly; and something of this change
appeared also in her work, which tended now to the graceful rather than
the grotesque. She received her fashionable visitant with off-hand
friendliness, not altogether with cordiality.

"Oh, I've something to show you. Do you know that name?"

Olga took a business-card, and read upon it: "Alexander Otway, Dramatic
& Musical Agent."

"It's his brother," she said, in a voice of quiet surprise.

"I thought so. The man called yesterday--wants a fetching thing to boom
an Irish girl at the halls. There's her photo."

It represented a piquant person in short skirts; a face neither very
pretty nor very young, but likely to be deemed attractive by the public
in question. They amused themselves over it for a moment.

"He used to be a journalist," said Olga. "Does he seem to be doing
well?"

"Couldn't say. A great talker, and a furious Jingo."

"Jingo?"

"This woman is to sing a song of his composition, all about the Empire.
Not the hall; the British. Glorifies the Flag, that blessed rag--a
rhyme I suggested to him, and asked him to pay me for. It's a taking
tune, and we shall have it everywhere, no doubt. He sang a verse--I
wish you could have heard him. A queer fish!"

Olga walked about, seeming to inspect the pictures, but in reality much
occupied with her thoughts.

"Well," she said presently, "I only looked in, dear, to say
how-do-you-do."

Miss Bonnicastle was drawing; she turned, as if to shake hands, but
looked her friend in the face with a peculiar expression, far more
earnest than was commonly seen in her.

"You called on Kite yesterday