e straightness till they neared the bridge
of the nose and there turning abruptly downwards, her thin and almost
white-lipped mouth, her cloudy brown hair which had no shine or sparkle,
her rather narrow and pointed chin, suggested to him unhealthiness, a
human being perhaps stricken by some obscure disease which had drained
her body of all fresh color, and robbed it of flesh, had caused to
come upon her something strange, not easily to be defined, which almost
suggested the charnel-house.

As he was looking at her, Mrs. Clarke turned slightly and glanced up at
the statue of Echo, and immediately Dion realized that she had beauty.
The line of her profile was wonderfully delicate and refined, almost
ethereal in its perfection; and the shape of her small head was
exquisite. Her head, indeed, looked girlish. Afterwards he knew that she
had enchanting hands--moving purities full of expressiveness--and slim
little wrists. Her expression was serious, almost melancholy, and in her
whole personality, shed through her, there was a penetrating refinement,
a something delicate, wild and feverish. She looked very sensitive and
at the same time perfectly self-possessed, as if, perhaps, she dreaded
Fate but could never be afraid of a fellow-creature. He thought:

"She's like Echo after her punishment."

On his way to greet Mrs. Chetwinde, he passed by her; as he did so she
looked at him, and he saw that she thoroughly considered him, with a
grave swiftness which seemed to be an essential part of her personality.
Then she spoke to Esme Darlington. Dion just caught the sound of her
voice, veiled, husky, but very individual and very attractive--a voice
that could never sing, but that could make of speech a music frail and
evanescent as a nocturne of Debussy's.

"Daventry's right," thought Dion. "That woman is surely innocent."

Mrs. Chetwinde, who was as haphazard, as apparently absent-minded and as
shrewd in her own house as in the houses of others, greeted Dion with a
vague cordiality. Her husband, a robust and very definite giant, with a
fan-shaped beard, welcomed him largely.

"Never appear at my wife's afternoons, you know," he observed, in a fat
and genial voice. "But to-day's exceptional. Always stick to an innocent
woman in trouble."

He lowered his voice in speaking the last sentence, and looked very
human. And immediately Dion was aware of a special and peculiar
atmosphere in Mrs. Chetwinde's drawing-room on this Sunday