thing for us. I'll write at once! And there is somebody at the
Embassy--why, of course, I can set all kinds of people to work!"

And her feet began to dance along the road beside him.

"We must get some Polish music"--she went on--"there's that marvellous
young pianist they rave about in Paris--Paderewski. I'm sure he'd help!
Otto has often talked to me about him. We must have lots of Chopin--and
Liszt--though of course he wasn't a Pole!--And Polish national
songs!--Otto was only telling me to-day how Chopin loved them--how he
and Liszt used to go about the villages and farms and note them down.
Oh, we'll have a wonderful collection!"

Her eyes shone in her small, flushed face. They walked on fast, talking
and dreaming, till there was Folly Bridge in front of them, and the
beginnings of Oxford. Falloden pulled up sharply.

"I must run back to him. Will you come again?"

She held out her hand. The moonlight, shining on his powerful face and
curly hair, stirred in her a sudden, acute sense of delight.

"Oh yes--we'll come again. But don't leave him!--don't, please, think of
it! He trusts you--he leans on you."

"It is kind of you to believe it. But I am no use!"

He put her back into the carriage, bowed formally, and was gone, running
up the hill at an athlete's pace.

The two ladies drove silently on, and were soon among the movement and
traffic of the Oxford streets. Connie's mind was steeped in passionate
feeling. Till now Falloden had touched first her senses, then her pity.
Now in these painful and despondent attempts of his, to adjust himself
to Otto's weakness and irritability, he was stirring sympathies and
enthusiasms in her which belonged to that deepest soul in Connie which
was just becoming conscious of itself. And all the more, perhaps,
because in Falloden's manner towards her there was nothing left of the
lover. For the moment at any rate she preferred it so. Life was all
doubt, expectation, thrill--its colour heightened, its meanings
underlined. And in her complete uncertainty as to what turn it would
take, and how the doubt would end, lay the spell--the potent tormenting
charm--of the situation.

She was sorry, bitterly sorry for Radowitz--the victim. But she loved
Falloden--the offender! It was the perennial injustice of passion, the
eternal injustice of human things.

* * * * *

When Falloden was half-way up the hill, he left the road, and took a
short cut thr