y noted with incredulity and alarm.

"Where did you and Louis Malcourt go this afternoon?" she asked,
unpegging her hair.

"Out to the beach. There was nothing there except sky and water, and a
filthy eagle dining on a dead fish."

Miss Palliser waited, sitting before her dresser; but as Virginia
offered no further information she shook out the splendid masses of her
chestnut hair and, leaning forward, examined her features in the mirror
with minute attention.

"It's strange," she murmured, half to herself, "how ill Jim Wayward has
been looking recently. I can't account for it."

"I can, dear," said Virginia gently.

Constance turned in surprise.

"How?"

"Mr. Malcourt says that he is practising self-denial. It hurts, you
know."

"What!" exclaimed Constance, flushing up.

"I said that it hurts."

"Such a slur as that harms Louis Malcourt--not Mr. Wayward!" returned
Constance hotly.

Virginia repeated: "It hurts--to kill desire. It hurts even before habit
is acquired ... they say. Louis Malcourt says so. And if that is
true--can you wonder that poor Mr. Wayward looks like death? I speak in
all sympathy and kindness--as did Mr. Malcourt."

So _that_ was it! Constance stared at her own fair face in the mirror,
and deep into the pained brown eyes reflected there. The eyes suddenly
dimmed and the parted mouth quivered.

So that was the dreadful trouble!--the explanation of the recent change
in him--the deep lines of pain from the wing of the pinched nostril--the
haunted gaze, the long, restless silences, the forced humour and its
bitter flavour tainting voice and word!

And she had believed--feared with a certainty almost hopeless--that it
was his old vice, slowly, inexorably transforming what was left of the
man she had known so long and cared for so loyally through all these
strange, confusing years.

From the mirror the oval of her own fresh unravaged face, framed in the
burnished brown of her hair, confronted her like a wraith of the past;
and, dreaming there, wide-eyed, expressionless, she seemed to see again
the old-time parlour set with rosewood; and the faded roses in the
carpet; and, through the half-drawn curtains, spring sunlight falling on
a boy and a little girl.

Virginia, partly dressed for dinner, rose and went to the window, frail
restless hands clasped behind her back, and stood there gazing out at
the fading daylight. Perhaps the close of day made her melancholy; for
there were trac