I lack, ideality--an unfortunate deficiency for me. I must probe,
analyse, dissect, see the thing as it really is, know it for what it
is."

"Well, she is the Countess Huescar now," I said. "For God's sake, leave
her alone."

He turned to me with the snarl of a beast. "How do you know she is the
Countess Huescar? Is it a special breed of woman made on purpose? How do
you know she isn't my wife--brain and heart, flesh and blood, mine? If
she was, do you think I should give her up because some fool has stuck
his label on her?"

I felt the anger burning in my eyes. "Yours, his! She is no man's
property. She is herself," I cried.

The wrinkles round his nose and mouth smoothed themselves out. "You need
not be afraid," he sneered. "As you say, she is the Countess Huescar.
Can you imagine her as Mrs. Doctor Washburn? I can't." He took her
photograph in his hand again. "The lower part of the face is the true
index to the character. It shows the animal, and it is the animal that
rules. The soul, the intellect, it comes and goes; the animal remains
always. Sensuousness, love of luxury, vanity, those are the strings to
which she dances. To be a Countess is of more importance to her than to
be a woman. She is his, not mine. Let him keep her."

"You do not know her," I answered; "you never have. You listen to what
she says. She does not know herself."

He looked at me queerly. "What do you think her to be?" he asked me. "A
true woman, not the shallow thing she seems?"

"A true woman," I persisted stoutly, "that you have not eyes enough to
see."

"You little fool!" he muttered, with the same queer look--"you little
fool. But let us hope you are wrong, Paul. Let us hope, for her sake,
you are wrong."

It was at one of Deleglise's Sunday suppers that I first met Urban Vane.
The position, nor even the character, I fear it must be confessed, of
his guests was never enquired into by old Deleglise. A simple-minded,
kindly old fellow himself, it was his fate to be occasionally surprised
and grieved at the discovery that even the most entertaining of supper
companions could fall short of the highest standard of conventional
morality.

"Dear, dear me!" he would complain, pacing up and down his studio
with puzzled visage. "The last man in the world of whom I should have
expected to hear it. So original in all his ideas. Are you quite sure?"

"I am afraid there can be no doubt about it."

"I can't believe it! I really can't b