brilliant eyes above the painted shadows, as she told to Nigel the
series of lies about the interview in Cleveland Square, putting herself
in the Doctor's place, him in her own. She had enjoyed doing that,
enjoyed it intellectually. And she had forced the Doctor to dance to her
piping. He had been obliged to join her in her deceit--almost to back
her up in it.

He knew now why she had been alone at her table, why she had advertised
her ill success in the life she had chosen, her present abandonment by
men. This had been done to strike at Armine's peculiar temperament. It
was a very clever stroke.

But it was a burning of her boats.

Meyer Isaacson frowned in the night.

A woman like Mrs. Chepstow does not burn her boats for nothing. How much
did she expect to gain by that sacrifice of improper pride, a pride
almost dearer than life to a woman of her type? The _quid pro quo_--what
was it to be?

He feared for Nigel, as he lay awake while the night drew on towards
dawn.

VI

Mrs. Chepstow's sitting-room at the Savoy was decorated with pink and
green in pale hues which suited well her present scheme of colour. In it
there was a little rosewood piano. Upon that piano's music-desk, on the
following day, stood a copy of Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius," open at the
following words:

"Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo! Go forth upon thy
journey, Christian soul! Go from this world!"

Scattered about the room were _The Nineteenth Century and After_, _The
Quarterly Review_, the _Times_, and several books; among them Goethe's
"Faust," Maspero's "Manual of Egyptian Archaeology," "A Companion to
Greek Studies," Guy de Maupassant's "Fort Comme la Mort," D'Annunzio's
"Trionfo della Morte," and Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter." There was also
a volume of Emerson's "Essays." In a little basket under the
writing-table lay the last number of _The Winning Post_, carefully
destroyed. There were a few pink roses in a vase. In a cage some
canary-birds were singing. The furniture had been pulled about by a
clever hand until the room had lost something of its look of a room in a
smart hotel. The windows were wide open on to the balcony. They
dominated the Thames Embankment, and a light breeze from the water
stirred the white and green curtains that framed them.

Into this pretty and peacefully cheerful chamber Nigel Armine was shown
by a waiter at five o'clock precisely, and left with the promise that
Mrs. Chepstow shou