es of tears on her lashes; perhaps it suggested the
approaching end of a dream so bright and strange that, at times, a dull
pang of dread stilled her heart--checking for a moment its heavy
beating.

Light died in the room; the panes turned silvery, then darker as the
swift Southern night fell over sea, lagoon, and forest.

Far away in the wastes of dune and jungle the sweet flute-like tremolo
of an owl broke out, prolonged infinitely. From the dark garden below, a
widow-bird called breathlessly, its ghostly cry, now a far whisper in
the night, now close at hand, husky, hurried, startling amid the
shadows. And, whir! whir-r-r! thud! came the great soft night-moths
against the window screens where sprays of silvery jasmine clung,
perfuming all the night.

Still Constance sat before the mirror which was now invisible in the
dusk, bare elbows on the dresser's edge, face framed in her hands over
which the thick hair rippled. And, in the darkness, her brown eyes
closed--perhaps that they might behold more clearly the phantoms of the
past together there in an old-time parlour, where the golden radiance
of suns long dead still lingered, warming the faded roses on the floor.

And after a long while her maid came with a card; and she straightened
up in her chair, gathered the filmy robe of lace, and, rising, pressed
the electric switch. But Virginia had returned to her own room to bathe
her eyelids and pace the floor until she cared to face the outer world
once more and, for another hour or two, deceive it.

CHAPTER XV

UNDER FIRE

Meanwhile Constance dressed hastily, abetted by the clever maid; for
Wayward was below, invited to dine with them. Malcourt also was due for
dinner, and, as usual, late.

In fact, he was at that moment leisurely tying his white neckwear in his
bed-chamber at Villa Cardross. And sometimes he whistled, tentatively,
as though absorbed in mentally following an elusive air; sometimes he
resumed a lighted cigarette which lay across the gilded stomach of a
Chinese joss, sending a thin, high thread of smoke to the ceiling. He
had begun his collection with one small idol; there were now nineteen,
and all hideous.

"The deuce! the deuce!" he murmured, rejecting the tie and trying
another one; "and all the things I've got to do this blessed night!...
Console the afflicted--three of them; dine with one, get to "The
Breakers" and spoon with another--get to the Club and sup with
another!--the deu