enty a fluctuation of flower-petal tint which
may mean an imperfect night can signify no really important cause. What
could eighteen or twenty have found to think about in night watches? But
in its centre of the world as it stands on the stage with the curtain
rolling up, those who have lived longer--so very long--are only the dim
audience sitting in the shadowy auditorium looking on at passionately
real life with which they have really nothing whatever to do, because
what they have seen is past and what they have learned has lost its
importance and meaning with the changing of the years. The lying awake
and tossing on pillows--if lying awake there is--has its cause in _real_
joys--or griefs--not in things atrophied by time. So it seems on the
stage, in the first act. If the curtain goes down on anguish and despair
it seems equally the pitiless truth that it can never rise again; the
play is ended; the lights go out forever; the theatre crumbles to dust;
the world comes to an end. But the dim audience sitting in the shadow do
not generally know this.

To those who came in and out of the house in Eaton Square the figure
sitting at the desk writing letters or taking orders from the Duchess
was that of the unconsidered and unreal girl. Among the changing groups
of women with intensely absorbed and often strained faces the
kind-hearted observing ones were given to noticing Robin and speaking to
her almost affectionately because she was so attractive an object as
well as so industriously faithful to her work. Girls who were
Jacqueminot-rose flushed and who looked up to answer people with eyes
like an antelope's were not customarily capable of concentrating their
attention entirely upon brief letters of request and lists of
necessaries for hospitals and comfort kits. This type was admitted to be
frequently found readier for service in the preparation of
entertainments "for the benefit of"--more especially when such benefits
took the form of dancing. But the Duchess' little Miss Lawless came and
went on errands, wasting no time. She never forgot things or was slack
in any way. Her antelope eyes expressed a kind of yearning eagerness to
do all she could without a moment's delay.

"She works as if it were a personal thing with her," Lady Lothwell once
said thoughtfully. "I have seen girls wear that look when they are war
brides or have lovers or brothers at the front."

But she remained to the world generally only a rather spe