s philosophy and purpose; and if she was not wholly
materialistic, it was because she had drunk deep, for one so young, at
the fountains of art, poetry, sculpture and history. For the last she
had a passion which was represented by books of biography without
number, and all the standard historians were to be found in her bedroom
and her boudoir. Yet, too, when she had opportunity--when Lady
Tynemouth brought them to her--she read the newest and most daring
productions of a school of French novelists and dramatists who saw the
world with eyes morally astigmatic and out of focus. Once she had
remarked to Alice Tynemouth:

"You say I dress well, yet it isn't I. It's my dressmaker. I choose the
over-coloured thing three times out of five--it used to be more than
that. Instinctively I want to blaze. It is the same in everything. I
need to be kept down, but, alas! I have my own way in everything. I
wish I hadn't, for my own good. Yet I can't brook being ruled."

To this Alice had replied: "A really selfish husband--not a difficult
thing to find--would soon keep you down sufficiently. Then you'd choose
the over-coloured thing not more than two times, perhaps one time, out
of five. Your orientalism is only undisciplined self-will. A little
cruelty would give you a better sense of proportion in colour--and
everything else. You have orientalism, but little or no orientation."

Here, now, standing before the fire, was that possible husband who, no
doubt, was selfish, and had capacities for cruelty which would give her
greater proportion--and sense of colour. In Byng's palace, with three
millions behind her--she herself had only the tenth of one million--she
could settle down into an exquisitely ordered, beautiful, perfect life
where the world would come as to a court, and--

Suddenly she shuddered, for these thoughts were sordid, humiliating,
and degrading. They were unbidden, but still they came. They came from
some dark fountain within herself. She really wanted--her idealistic
self wanted--to be all that she knew she looked, a flower in life and
thought. But, oh, it was hard, hard for her to be what she wished! Why
should it be so hard for her?

She was roused by a voice. "Cronje!" it said in a deep, slow, ragged
note.

Byng's half-caste valet, Krool, sombre of face, small, lean, ominous,
was standing in the doorway.

"Cronje! ... Well?" rejoined Byng, quietly, yet with a kind of smother
in the tone.

Krool stretched