ortance. Our creed is our creed. We must abide by what we
teach and believe."

"Yes."

He nodded absently, staring palely into space.

Perhaps his lost gaze evoked the warm-skinned, sunny-haired girl who
had gone out of the semi-light of this still place, leaving the void
unutterably vast around him. For this had been the lithe thing's
silken lair--the slim and supple thing with beryl eyes--here where
thick-piled carpets of the East deadened every human movement--where
no sound stirred, nor any air--where dull shapes loomed, lacquered and
indistinct, and an odour of Chinese lacquer and nard haunted the
tinted dusk.

* * * * *

Like one of those lazy, golden, jewelled sea-creatures of irresponsible
freedom brought seemed to fill the girl cooler currents arouses a
restlessness infernal, Marya's first long breath of freedom subtly
excited her.

She had no definite ideas, no plans. She was merely tired of Vanya.

Perhaps her fresh, wholesome contact with Jim had started it--the
sense of a clean vitality which had seemed to envelop her like the
delicious, half-resented chill of a spring-pool plunge. For the
exhilaration possessed her still; and the sudden stimulation which the
sense of irresponsible freedom brought seemed to fill the girl with a
new vigour.

Foot-loose, heart-loose, her green eyes on the open world where it
stretched away into infinite horizons, she paced her new nest in the
Hotel Rajah, tingling with subdued excitement, innocent of the
faintest regret for what had been.

For a week she lived alone, enjoying the sensation of being hidden,
languidly savouring the warm comfort of isolation.

She had not sent for her belongings. She purchased new personal
effects, enchanted to be rid of familiar things.

There was no snow. She walked a great deal, moving in unaccustomed
sections of the city at all hours, skirting in the early winter dusk
the glitter of Christmas preparations along avenues and squares,
lunching where she was unlikely to encounter anybody she knew, dining,
too, at hazard in unwonted places--restaurants she had never heard of,
tea-rooms, odd corners.

Vanya wrote her. She tossed his letters aside, scarcely read. Ilse and
Palla wrote her, and telephoned her. She paid them no attention.

The metropolitan jungle fascinated her. She adored her liberty, and
looked out of beryl-green eyes across the border of license, where
ghosts of the half-w