dined alone if she could help it, and reveled in
gay parties for every meal, with plenty of brilliant lights and the
chatter of other groups near at hand. Wherever she went, from Carlsbad
to Cairo, in the best restaurant you could always find her amidst her
many friends, feasting every night. And now the party consisted of some
of her compatriots, a Russian Prince, and an Italian Marchese. She
looked superbly beautiful; anger had lent a sparkle to her eyes and a
flush to her cheeks; no rouge was needed to-night, and she could
scintillate to her heart's content. She flashed words occasionally at
John Derringham, and he knew, and was horribly conscious all the time,
that once he would have found her most brilliant, but that now it was
exactly as when he had looked at the X-ray photograph of his own broken
ankle, where the sole thing which made a reality was the skeleton
substructure. He could only seem to see Cecilia Cricklander's vulgar
soul---the pink and white perfection of her body had melted into
nothingness.

He found himself listening for some of her parrot-utterances, as a
detached spectator, and taking a sort of ugly pleasure in recognizing
which were the phrases of Arabella. The man upon her left hand was
intelligent, and was gazing at her with the rapt attention beauty always
commands, and she was uttering her finest platitudes.

And once John Derringham leant back in his chair, when no one was
observing him, and laughed aloud. The supreme mockery of it all! And in
five weeks from this night this woman would be his wife!

_His wife!_ Ye gods!

They had no _tete-a-tete_ words before the party broke up, and had
hardly exchanged a sentence when, as the last guest was saying farewell,
Arabella, too, retired from the sitting-room.

So they were alone.

"Cecilia," he said, coming up quite close to her, "we started rather
badly to-night--at least let us be friends." And he held out his hand.
"Believe me, I wish to do all that I can to please you, but I am afraid
I make a very indifferent sort of lover. Forgive me,"

"Oh, you are well enough, I suppose," she said. "No man values what he
has won--it is only the winning of it that is any fun. I understand the
feeling myself. Don't let us talk heroics."

John Derringham smiled.

"Certainly not," he said.

And then she put up her face and let him kiss her, which he did with
some sickening revolt in his heart. Even her physical beauty had no more
any effect upo