handsome and showy Oriental, that was all,
and she knew instinctively that the type must be common in the East.
What attracted her was probably his daring masculineness, which
contrasted so strongly with Lushington's quiet and rather bashful
manliness. The Englishman would die for a cause and make no noise
about it, which would be heroic; but the Greek would run away with a
woman he loved, at the risk of breaking his neck, which was romantic
in the extreme. It is not easy to be a romantic character in the eyes
of a lady who lives on the stage, and by it, and constantly gives
utterance to the most dramatic sentiments at a pitch an octave higher
than any one else; but Logotheti had succeeded. There never was a
woman yet to whom that sort of thing has not appealed once; for one
moment she has felt everything whirling with her as if the centre of
gravity had gone mad, and the Ten Commandments might drop out of the
solid family Bible and get lost. That recollection is probably the
only secret of a virtuously colourless existence, but she hides it,
like a treasure or a crime, until she is an old and widowed woman;
and one day, at last, she tells her grown-up granddaughter, with a
far-away smile, that there was once a man whose eyes and voice stirred
her strongly, and for whom she might have quite lost her head. But she
never saw him again, and that is the end of the little story; and the
tall girl in her first season thinks it rather dull.

But it was not likely that the chronicle of Cordova's youth should
come to such an abrupt conclusion. The man who moved her now had been
near her too often, the sound of his voice was too easily recalled,
and, since his rival's defection, he was too necessary to her; and,
besides, he was as obstinate as Christopher Columbus.

'Let me see,' she said thoughtfully. 'There's a rehearsal to-morrow
morning. That means a late luncheon. Come at two o'clock, and if it's
fine we can go for a little walk. Will you?'

'Of course. Thank you.'

He had hardly spoken the words when a servant opened the door and Lady
Maud came in. She had not dropped the opera cloak she wore over her
black velvet gown; she was rather pale, and the look in her eyes told
that something was wrong, but her serenity did not seem otherwise
affected. She kissed Margaret and gave her hand to Logotheti.

'We dined early to go to the play,' she said, 'and as there's a
curtain-raiser, I thought I might as well take a hansom and