with her after the performance
that night."

Richard paused, again drained his glass.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "what atrocious nonsense I am talking!"

"I think I rather enjoy it," Madame de Vallorbes answered. She looked
at the young man sideways, from under her delicate eyelids. He was
perfectly sober--of that there was no question. Yet he was less
inaccessible, somehow, than usual. She inclined to experiment.--"Only I
am sorry for Morabita in more ways than one, poor wretch. But then
perhaps I am just a little sorry for all those women whom you reject,
Richard."

"The women whom I reject?" he said harshly.

"Yes, whom you reject," Helen repeated.--Then she busied herself with a
small black fig, splitting it deftly open, disclosing the purple, and
rose, and clear living greens of the flesh and innumerable seeds of it,
colours rich as those of a tropic sky at sunset.--"And there are so
many of those women it seems to me! I am coming to have a quite
pathetic fellowship for them." She buried her white teeth in the
softness of the fig.--"Not without reason, perhaps. It is idle to deny
that you are a pastmaster in the ungentle art of rejection. What have
you to say in self-defense, Dickie?"

"That talking nonsense appears to be highly infectious--and that it is
a disagreeably oppressive evening."

Helen de Vallorbes smiled upon him, glanced quickly over her shoulder
to assure herself the servants were no longer present--then spoke,
leaning across the corner of the table towards him, while her eyes
searched his with a certain daring provocation.

"Yes, I admit I have finished my fig. Dinner is over. And it is my
place to disappear according to custom."--She laid her rosy finger-tips
together, her elbows resting on the table. "But I am disinclined to
disappear. I have a number of things to say. Take that question of
going to the opera, for instance. Half Naples will be there, and I know
more than half Naples, and more than half Naples knows me. I do not
crave to run incontinently into the arms of any of de Vallorbes' many
relations. They were not conspicuously kind to me when I was here as a
girl and stood very much in need of kindness. So the question of going
to the San Carlo, you see, requires reflection. And then,"--her tone
softened to a most persuasive gentleness,--"then, the evenings are a
trifle long when one is alone and has nothing very satisfactory to
think about. And I have been worried to-day, de