You can create a new ideal. Only be true always
to yourself. Be very jealous indeed of absorbing any of the modes of
thought and life which will spring up everywhere around you in the new
world. Remember it is the old ideals which are the sweetest and the
truest.... Forgive me, please! I am talking like a pedagogue."

"You are talking as I like to be talked to," she answered. "Yet you
need not fear that my head will be turned, even if the success should
come. You forget that I am almost an old woman. The religion of my
life has long been conceived and fashioned."

He looked at her with a curious smile. If thirty seemed old to her,
what must she think of him?

"I wonder," he said simply, "if you would think me impertinent if I
were to ask you to tell me more about yourself. How is it that you are
altogether alone in the world?"

The words had scarcely left his lips before he would have given much
to have recalled them. He saw her start, flinch back as though she had
been struck, and a grey pallor spread itself over her face, almost to
the lips. She looked at him fixedly for several moments without
speaking.

"One day," she said, "I will tell you all that. You shall know
everything. But not now; not yet."

"Whenever you will," he answered, ignoring her evident agitation.
"Come! what do you say to a walk down through the Park? To-day is a
holiday for me--a day to be marked with a white stone. I have
registered an oath that I will not even look at a pen. Will you not
help me to keep it?"

"By all means," she answered blithely. "I will take you home with me,
and keep you there till the hour of temptation has passed. To-day is
to be my last day of idleness! I too have need of a white stone."

"We will place them," he said, "side by side."

CHAPTER X

Matravers' luncheon party marked the termination for some time of any
confidential intercourse between Berenice and himself. Every moment of
her time was claimed by Fergusson, who, in his anxiety to produce a
play from which he hoped so much before the wane of the season, gave
no one any rest, and worked himself almost into a fever. There were
two full rehearsals a day, and many private ones at her rooms.
Matravers calling there now and then found Fergusson always in
possession, and by degrees gave it up in despair. He had a horror of
interfering in any way, even of being asked for his advice concerning
the practical reproduction of his work. Fergusson's inv