ion of the other thing; perhaps the keener, because I have not
got it. I have seen faces like yours before, but they have always
belonged to someone who wore the garb of a nun. The nuns shut out the
world from them; you, on the contrary, have lived in the world, and have
still kept apart from it. I cannot make out how you have done it. I
cannot make out how you have been allowed to do it. Tell me, has no man
ever kissed you?"

"Never," she said fervently.

"I believe you," said the burglar. "I think I have never met another
woman in whom I would have believed a similar declaration. You will
observe that I did not offer you a cigarette, because I knew for a fact
that you have never smoked."

"Never," she said.

"I knew it; just as I knew that you had bought this pearl necklace
yourself; just as I knew that you had never been kissed; just as I knew
that you were good enough to compel even the abject reverence of as bad
a man as myself."

Her hand, toying nervously with things on the table, happened to strike
the decanter. "But won't you have some more of this?" she said.

He glanced at a gold watch, on the back of which another man's armorial
bearings were engraved. "I have only two minutes," he said, "but I must
drink your health at parting. Do you know that it is absolutely right
for you to wear pearls? Coloured stones would be quite wrong; diamonds
are too hard; pearls give just the right note of purity and softness. I
suppose you have realised that with the exception of one ring, you wear
no other gems. I noticed that ring as I came in. Those large table-cut
emeralds, when they are of that fine quality, fetch a good deal of
money. I should sell it if I were you. It is not in keeping. Perhaps it
seems to you a trifle not worth mentioning, but you remember what Walter
Pater says about some trifling and pretty graces being insignia of the
nobler world of aspiration and idea."

Miss Markham clasped her hands. "How strange," she said. "I was reading
that just as you came in. How strange that you should have known it!"

"My dear lady, you must not imagine that I am a romantic man, for I am
not, nor am I a good man. I am not highly connected, and I have not got
a better self; the only self I have got is the one before you. But I do
claim to be able to appreciate. I have appreciated this evening
immensely. Walter Pater is not the last word just now, but I have always
appreciated beautiful prose. Far more than beautif