e me a trial? There isn't anyone else, is there?"

He was amazed at himself to feel jealousy hot in him as he put the
question.

There was no one else at the moment; but she sat thinking and playing
with the stem of her wineglass, and keeping a half-cynical,
half-simpering silence. It was the veil with which she shrouded her
stupidity while she debated the _pros_ and _cons_ with herself as
deliberately as she had spoken.

"No," she said at last, with a long, meaning look which meant nothing.
"No, there is no one else, Osborn." Her sigh ruffled the chiffons on
her breast.

"I'm going to Paris for the firm next month; it'll only be a week-end.
Come, too? I'll give you a good time."

"I'll see," she murmured, her stupidity not dense enough to give a
promise thus early. A month? A long, long while, an age, in which
other things might turn up.

"So'll I," he said, looking into her eyes. "I'll see that you come."

"I haven't a rag to wear."

"You'll have all Paris to choose from."

"I do want a couple of hats," she said, with the worldly yet childish
_naivete_ of her class; "I'm going to Bristol in panto--at
Christmas, you know."

"I'll come down."

She was conscienceless, like the rest of her type. She knew, her
observation had told her long ago, that this man had ties, domestic
relations, duties; all of which mattered nothing to her. Before her
wants and desires, momentary though they might be, all considerations
flew like thistledown before strong wind.

A Nero among women, like the rest of her pleasure-sisters, she was
planned for destruction and she went upon her way destroying. The
loudest cry could not reach her, nor the greatest sorrow touch her;
nor could broken hearts block the path to the most fleeting of her
desires.

She cared not who wept; as she had no faith, nor power for pity, so
she had no tears.

She took Osborn Kerr into her hands.

She said idly, to pass the time, but softly, just as if there was some
meaning behind the question: "What made you think there was anyone
else, dear?"

He looked at her and spoke rather hoarsely, under the influence of the
matter in hand: "Oh well; there might have been. Roselle, do you think
you can love me?"

"I could," she answered. She assimilated the details of a near-by
toilette. "But--"

"Don't let's have any 'buts.'"

She had no subtlety, only the power of making what she said subtle;
and she said:

"I don't know that loving is wise."

Os