-worth knowing. Anecdotes of them all--those little personal
insights into private domestic relations of which surely there must
somewhere be an illicit still, hidden in the mountains where gossip
echoes--he had at the tips of his fingers.

"Surely you've heard that last thing that Mrs. ---- said at the first
night of ----;" and thereafter follows some quaint conceit--smuggled,
God knows how, from the illicit still in the mountains, stamped with
a fictitious year to give it flavour--which the well-known actress
in question would have offered her soul to have said on the occasion
alluded to in the story, but which she had never even thought of.

It may be concluded, then, from these apparently needless
digressions that Devenish was good company. He did his best to amuse
Sally--he succeeded. When they were halfway through the dinner and
he had casually refilled her glass with champagne, she was prepared
to see humour in everything he said.

There is a mood of recklessness--wild determined recklessness--that
strikes, like a light in the heavens, across the face of despair.
In such a mood was Sally then. Her mind, empty of the vice which so
often accompanies it, was echoing with the cry--What does it matter?
What does it matter? When he filled her glass a second time, she half
raised a hand from her lap to stop him. But what did it matter? It
would put her in good spirits, and in good spirits she felt the strong
desire to be. Between this and the harmful result of the wine, so
far a call was stretched in her mind that she never let it enter her
consideration. Let him fill her glass a second time! She was to return
to rooms empty but of the bitterest of associations. The whole long
night had to be passed through with that haunting speculation--which
now so frequently beset her--the wondering of what Traill was doing,
the questioning in what woman's arms he was finding the joy of desire
which he had found in hers.

What did it signify then, this evening in which she let go the
strained reserve which at any other time she would have retained?
What did it signify, so long as the deepest beating of her heart was
unmoved by the quickened pulses and the eyes alight with a reckless
laughter?

It mattered nothing to her who knew its meaning; but to Devenish,
seeing the colour lifting to her cheeks, watching the sparkling in
those eyes which had met his but an hour or more ago, when
disappointed hope had thrown them into deep s