y the reflection
of Nur-el-Din's pretty neck and shoulders. The dancer was talking
again in low tones to Strangwise.

But Barbara swiftly forgot that glimpse of the dancer's face in
the glass. For she was very happy. Happiness, like high spirits,
is eminently contagious, and the two men at her side were
supremely content.

Her father's eyes were shining with his little success of
the evening: on the way upstairs Fletcher had held out hopes to
him of a long engagement at the Palaceum while as for the other,
he was radiant with the excitement of his first night in town
after long months of campaigning.

He was thinking that his leave had started most propitiously.
After a man has been isolated for months amongst muddy
masculinity, the homeliest woman will find favor in his eyes. And
to neither of these women, in whose presence he so unexpectedly
found himself within a few hours of landing in England, could the
epithet "homely" be applied. Each represented a distinct type of
beauty in herself, and Desmond, as he chatted with Barbara, was
mentally contrasting the two women. Barbara, tall and slim and
very healthy, with her braided brown hair, creamy complexion and
gray eyes, was essentially English. She was the typical woman of
England, of England of the broad green valleys and rolling downs
and snuggling hamlets, of England of the white cliffs gnawed by
the restless ocean. The other was equally essentially a woman of
the South. Her dark eyes, her upper lip just baring her firm
white teeth, spoke of hot Latin or gypsy blood surging in her
veins. Hers was the beauty of the East, sensuous, arresting,
conjuring up pictures of warm, perfumed nights, the thrumming of
guitars, a great yellow moon hanging low behind the palms.

"Barbara!" called Nur-el-Din from the dressing table. Mr.
Mackwayte had joined her there and was chatting to Strangwise.

"You will stay and talk to me while I change n'est-ce pas? Your
papa and these gentlemen are going to drink a whiskey-soda with
that animal Fletcher... quel homme terrible... and you shall join
them presently."

The men went out, leaving Barbara alone with the dancer. Barbara
noticed how tired Nur-el-Din was looking. Heir pretty, childish
ways seemed to have evaporated with her high spirits. Her face
was heavy and listless. There were lines round heir eyes, and her
mouth had a hard, drawn look.

"Child," she said, "give me, please, my peignoir... it is behind
the door,... and