, the white mask of
his face, mercilessly revealed in the clear moonlight, was twisted into
harsh lines of mental conflict. A certain grim triumph manifested itself
in the set of his mouth and out-thrust jaw.

He did not see the slight figure standing just within the shade of the
rose-twined arch, and Magda remained for a moment or two watching him in
silence. The unbarred door was explained now. Storran had not come in
at all that night. She guessed the struggle which had sent him forth
to seek the utter solitude of the garden. Almost she thought she could
divine the processes of thought which had closed his lips in that
strange line of ironic triumph. He had told her to go--when every nerve
of him ached to bid her stay. And he was glad that the strength in him
had won.

A bitter smile flitted across her face. Men were all the same! They
idolised a woman just because she was beautiful--for her lips and eyes
and hair and the nameless charm that was in her--and set her up on an
altar at which they could kneel becomingly. Then, when they found she
was merely an ordinary human being like themselves, with her bundle
of faults and failings, hereditary and acquired, the prig in them was
appropriately shocked--and they went away!

An unhappy woman is very often a bitter one. And Magda had been slowly
learning the meaning of unhappiness for the first time in her life--a
life that had been hitherto roses and laurel all the way.

The devils that lie in wait for our weak moments prompted her then. The
bitterness faded from her lips and they curved in a smile that subtly
challenged the stern decision in Dan Storran's face. She hesitated an
instant. Then, with feet that scarcely seemed to brush the grass, she
glided forward, swaying, bending to some rhythmic measure, floating
spirit-like across the lawn.

With a great cry Dan leaped to his feet and stared at her, transfixed.
At the sound of his voice she paused, poised on one bare foot, leaning
a little towards him with curving, outstretched arms. Then, before he
could touch her, she drew away, step by step, and Dan Storran, standing
there in tense, breathless silence, beheld what no one else had ever
seen--the Wielitzska dancing in the moonlight as she alone could dance.

He knew nothing of art, nor of the supreme technique which went to make
each supple movement a thing of sheer perfection, instinct with rhythm
and significance. But he was a man, and a man in love, fighting