t, quite openly regarded her
with contemptuous disapproval--and made no bones about telling her so.

His indictment of her had left nothing to the imagination. She felt
stunned, and, for the first time in her life, a little unwilling doubt
of herself assaulted her. Was she really anything at all like the
woman Michael Quarrington had pictured? A woman without heart or
conscience--the "kind of woman he had no place for"?

She winced a little at the thought. It was strange how much she minded
his opinion--the opinion of a man whom she had only met by chance and
whom she was very unlikely ever to meet again. He himself had certainly
evinced no anxiety to renew the acquaintance. And this, too, fretted her
in some unaccountable way.

She could not analyse her own emotions. She felt hurt and angry and
ashamed in the same breath--and all because an unknown man, an absolute
stranger, had told her in no measured terms exactly what he thought of
her!

Only--he was not really quite a stranger! He was the "Saint Michel" of
her childhood days, the man with whom she had unconsciously compared
those other men whom the passing years had brought into her life--and
always to their disadvantage.

The first time she had seen him in the woods at Coverdale was the day
when Hugh Vallincourt had beaten her; she had been smarting with the
physical pain and humiliation of it. And now, this second time they
had met, she had been once more forced to endure that strange and
unaccustomed experience called pain. Only this time she felt as though
her soul had been beaten, and it was Saint Michel himself who had
scourged her.

The door at the far end of the room opened suddenly and a welcome voice
broke cheerfully across the bitter current of her thoughts.

"Well, here I am at last! Has Magda arrived home yet?"

Davilof ceased playing abruptly and the speaker paused on the threshold
of the room, peering into the dusk. Magda rose from her seat by the fire
and switched on one of the electric burners.

"Yes, here I am," she said. "Did you get held up by the fog, Gillian?"

The newcomer advanced into the circle of light. She was a small, slight
woman, though the furs she was wearing served to conceal the slenderness
of her figure. Someone had once said of her that "Mrs. Grey was a
charming study in sepia." The description was not inapt. Eyes and hair
were brown as a beechnut, and a scattering of golden-brown freckles
emphasised the warm tints o