develop in all his
dependents.

As Valerie made no reply, she harked back to her former subject. 'I was
in danger last night, Jack, yet you would not come to my help. What
excuse can a man offer for such a thing?' her voice and lips had grown
tender in addressing him.

'The Duke, Madame.'

'That for the old Duke!' with a charming gesture of emptying both her
little hands. 'What is he in comparison with me? Jack, you are but a
poor lover after all!'

Rallywood began to see that some motive underlay Isolde's wild talk. The
kind eyes with which he had been watching her changed.

'It is very true,' he said.

'Jack, Jack, how am I to forgive you?' she swept on. 'Yet you remember
when I was a firefly at the palace ball, I told you that like a firefly
my life would be short and merry. My prophecy is coming true.'

An almost imperceptible alteration in the pose of the quiet figure by
the open stove was not lost upon Madame de Sagan.

The sweet treble voice resumed:

'You took a firefly from my fan and told me that one always wanted the
beautiful things to live for ever. Jack, you promised to be my friend
that night. You have not forgotten?'

'I have not forgotten.'

'And the firefly? Have you kept that as carelessly as you have kept your
promise? Where is your cigarette-case? Ah!' a pause, then a cry of
pleasure. 'Valerie, come here! He dropped it into his cigarette-case and
it is here still! If you had only reminded him of that----'

Valerie stood up cold and proud, and exceedingly pale.

'I forgot.'

'It does not matter now,' Isolde replied, taking the glittering atom
from its hiding-place and holding it up on her slender finger to catch
the light, 'since we have met after all. You meant to fail, Valerie!
Were you not ashamed to deceive me last night--even last night when you
saw I was desperate, and oh, so horribly afraid?'

Rallywood, absorbed in other thoughts, gathered very little of what was
being said. After avoiding Isolde of Sagan with more or less success on
the Frontier, he had, since his stay in Revonde, yielded in an odd
reserved way to her infatuation for him, partly out of a desire to
secure meetings with Mademoiselle Selpdorf, partly from a man's stupid
helplessness under such circumstances. The more chivalrous the man the
more helpless very often. But all this was entirely and for ever
unexplainable to Mademoiselle Selpdorf. He drew a deep breath. There was
nothing for it but to accept the