tion isn't dead yet, whatever the--perhaps you saw me being got
out?"

"No, I didn't."

"But you do know?"

"Naturally."

"I say, I wish you'd let me have--"

He checked himself abruptly, and muttered:

"Good God! What a brute I am."

He sprang up and walked about the room. Presently he stopped in front of
the statuette of the "_Danseuse de Tunisie_."

"Is it the woman that does it all, or the fan?" he said. "I don't know.
Sometimes I think it's one, and sometimes the other. Without the fan
there's purity, what's meant from the beginning--"

"By whom?" said Robin. "I thought you were an atheist?"

"Oh, God! I don't know what I am."

He turned away from the statuette.

"With the fan there's so much more than purity, than what was meant to
complete us--as devils--men. But--mothers don't carry the fan. And I'm
going North to-night."

"Do you mean to say that Lady Holme--?"

Robin's voice was stern.

"Why did she say that to me?"

"What did she say?"

"That she wished to speak to me, to dance with me."

"She said that? How can you know?"

"Oh, I wasn't so drunk that I couldn't hear the voice from Eden. Pierce,
you know her. She likes you. Tell her to forgive as much as she can.
Will you? And tell her not to carry the fan again when fools like me are
about."

And then, without more words, he went out of the room and left Robin
standing alone.

Robin looked at the statuette, and remembered what Sir Donald Ulford
had said directly he saw it--"Forgive me, that fan makes that statuette
wicked."

"Poor old Carey!" he murmured.

His indignation at Carey's conduct, which had been hot, had nearly died
away.

"If I had told him what she said about him at supper!" he thought.

And then he began to wonder whether Lady Holme had changed her mind on
that subject. Surely she must have changed it. But one never knew--with
women. He took up his hat and gloves and went out. If Lady Holme was in
he meant to give her Carey's message. It was impossible to be jealous of
Carey now.

Lady Holme was not in.

As Robin walked away from Cadogan Square he was not sure whether he was
glad or sorry that he had not been able to see her.

After his cup of early morning tea Lord Holme had seemed to be "dear
old Fritz" again, and Lady Holme felt satisfied with herself despite the
wagging tongues of London. She knew she had done an incautious thing.
She knew, too, that Carey had failed her. Her impulse had been to use