eeking for escape. He was on his feet now
and he clutched at his hat.

"I must go," he insisted almost roughly.

"Am I keeping you?" she asked innocently. "Well, you shall go as soon as
you please, only you must promise me one thing. You must come back, say
within a week, and let me know how my sister is. I am not half so brutal
as you think. I really am anxious about her. Please!"

"I will promise that," he answered.

"Wait one moment, then," she begged, turning to the letters by her side.
"There is just something I want to ask you. Don't be impatient--it is
entirely a matter of business."

All the time he was acutely conscious of that restless desire to get out
of the room. The woman's white arms, from which the sleeves of her blue
gown had fallen back, were stretched towards him as she lazily turned
over her pile of correspondence. They were very beautiful arms and
Tavernake, although he had had no experience, was dimly aware of the
fact. Her eyes, too, seemed always to be trying to reach some part of
him which was dead, or as yet unborn. He could feel her striving to get
there, beating against the walls of his indifference. Why should a woman
wear blue stockings because she had a blue gown, he wondered idly. She
was not like Beatrice, this alluring, beautiful woman, who lay there
talking to him in a manner whose meaning came to him only in strange,
bewildering flashes. He could be with Beatrice and feel the truth of
what he had once told her--that her sex was a thing which need not even
be taken into account between them. With this woman it was different; he
felt that she wished it to be different.

"Perhaps you had better tell me about that matter of business next time
I am here," he suggested, with an abruptness which was almost brusque.
"I must go now. I do not know why I have stayed so long."

She held out her fingers.

"You are a very sudden person," she declared, smiling at his
discomfiture. "If you must go!"

He scarcely touched her hand, anxious only to get away. And then the
door opened and a man of somewhat remarkable appearance entered the room
with the air of a privileged person. He was oddly dressed, with little
regard to the fashion of the moment. His black coat was cut after
the mode of a past generation, his collar was of the type affected by
Gladstone and his fellow-statesmen, his black bow was arranged with
studied negligence and he showed more frilled white shirt-front than
is usual in