o myself in you--"

She paused baffled. "I know exactly," said Sir Richmond.

"In my composition I perceive there have always been two ruling strains.
I was a spoilt child at home, a rather reserved girl at school, keen on
my dignity. I liked respect. I didn't give myself away. I suppose one
would call that personal pride. Anyhow it was that streak made me value
the position of being a rich married woman in New York. That was why
I became engaged to Lake. He seemed to be as good a man as there was
about. He said he adored me and wanted me to crown his life. He wasn't
ill-looking or ill-mannered. The second main streak in my nature
wouldn't however fit in with that."

She stopped short.

"The second streak," said Sir Richmond.

"Oh!--Love of beauty, love of romance. I want to give things their
proper names; I don't want to pretend to you.... It was more or less
than that.... It was--imaginative sensuousness. Why should I pretend it
wasn't in me? I believe that streak is in all women."

"I believe so too. In all properly constituted women."

"I tried to devote that streak to Lake," she said. "I did my best for
him. But Lake was much too much of a gentleman or an idealist about
women, or what you will, to know his business as a lover. And that side
of me fell in love, the rest of me protesting, with a man named Caston.
It was a notorious affair. Everybody in New York couples my name with
Caston. Except when my father is about. His jealousy has blasted an
area of silence--in that matter--all round him. He will not know of that
story. And they dare not tell him. I should pity anyone who tried to
tell it him."

"What sort of man was this Caston?"

Miss Grammont seemed to consider. She did not look at Sir Richmond; she
kept her profile to him.

"He was," she said deliberately, "a very rotten sort of man."

She spoke like one resolved to be exact and judicial. "I believe I
always knew he wasn't right. But he was very handsome. And ten years
younger than Lake. And nobody else seemed to be all right, so I
swallowed that. He was an artist, a painter. Perhaps you know his work."
Sir Richmond shook his head. "He could make American business men look
like characters out of the Three Musketeers, they said, and he was
beginning to be popular. He made love to me. In exactly the way Lake
didn't. If I shut my eyes to one or two things, it was delightful. I
liked it. But my father would have stood a painter as my husband almos