." She had
loosened her mantle; now she let it drop upon the Eastern carpet, emerging
from its blackness as a slender, supple, upright shape in clinging,
creamy-white draperies; her exquisite arms bare to the shoulder, and
clasped midway by heavy, twisted bracelets of barbaric gold, her
nymph-like bosom swelling from the folded draperies of the low-cut bodice
like a twin-budded narcissus flowering from the pale calyx, her sweet
throat clasped about with Saxham's gift of pearls.

"She could not sing, though the people applauded and encored her"--there
was a gleam of disdain in the golden eyes--"but she was very pretty ...
she danced with wonderful grace and lightness ... it was like a swallow
dipping and darting over the shallows of the river-shore--like a branch of
red pomegranate-blossoms swayed and swung by a spring breeze.... I admired
her, and yet I was sorry for her.... To have to pose and bound and whirl
before all those rows and rows of staring faces night after night!..."

Saxham did not smile. But a muscle twitched in his cheek as he said:

"She would hardly thank you for pitying her."

"She would be right to resent my pity!" Lynette burst out with sudden
vehemence. "She has been injured, and I was the cause! Oh! how could you
be so cruel as to let me go on loving him? Was it kind? Was it fair to
yourself and me?"

Saxham's square, pale face was perfectly expressionless. He waited in
silence to hear the rest.

"You know of whom I speak ..." said Lynette. "He was gay and beautiful and
winning--not chivalrous, as I believed him; not honest, or sincere, or
true. Months before we met at Gueldersdorp he was the husband of this
actress--the woman I saw upon the stage to-night. And you knew all this,
and never told me! You knew that his memory was sacred in my heart. A
woman I was introduced to here in London once tried to blacken it. She
said she wished to act towards me as a friend. I remember that I laughed
in her face as I turned and left her. 'You thought to make me hate him,' I
said. 'You have failed miserably. If it were possible to love him
better--if I could honour his memory more than I do now, I would, because
of the evil you have spoken of my dead!'"

She heard Saxham draw breath heavily. She went on with increased passion,
and gathering resentment:

"All my life long I might have gone on in my blindness, honouring the
dishonourable, cherishing the base, but for the idle gossip of two
strangers in