aid, looking down at her
with a shade of anxiety in his clear, grave face. "Was not this Lady
Truton's night?"

She nodded.

"Yes; don't talk to me--just yet. I am upset! Come in and sit with
me!"

He hesitated. With a scrupulous delicacy, which sometimes almost
irritated her, he had invariably refrained from paying her visits so
late as this. But to-night was different! Her fingers were clasping
his arm,--and she was in trouble. He suffered himself to be led up the
stairs into her little room.

"Some coffee for two," she told her woman. "You can go to bed then! I
shall not want you again!"

She threw herself into an empty chair, and loosened the silk ribbons
of her opera cloak.

"Do you mind opening the window?" she asked. "It is stifling in here.
I can scarcely breathe!"

He threw it wide open, and wheeled her chair up to it. The glare from
the West End lit up the dark sky. The silence of the little room and
the empty street below, seemed deepened by that faint, far-away roar
from the pandemonium of pleasure. A light from the opposite side of
the way,--or was it the rising moon behind the dark houses?--gleamed
upon her white throat, and in her soft, dim eyes. She lay quite still,
looking into vacancy. Her hand hung over the side of the chair nearest
to him. Half unconsciously he took it up and stroked it soothingly.
The tears gushed from her eyes. At his kindly touch her over-wrought
feelings gave way. Her fingers closed spasmodically upon his.

He said nothing. The time had passed when words were necessary between
them. They were near enough to one another now to understand the
value of silence. But those few moments seemed to him for ever like a
landmark in his life. A new relation was born between them in the
passionate intensity of that deep quietness.

He watched her bosom cease to heave, and the dimness pass from her
eyes. Then he took up the box which he had been carrying, and emptied
the pink-and-white blossoms into her lap. She stooped down and buried
her face in them. Their faint, delicate perfume seemed to fill the
room.

"You are very good," she said abruptly. "Thank God that there is some
one who is good to me!"

The coffee was in the room, and Berenice threw off her cloak and
brought it to him. A fit of restlessness seemed to have followed upon
her moment of weakness. She began walking with quick, uneven steps up
and down the room. Matravers forgot to drink his coffee. He was
watching he