" she said.

Morena flushed and his lids flickered. He was for an instant absurdly
inclined to anger and made two or three steps away. But he came back.

He bowed and spoke as he would have spoken to a great lady, suavely,
deferentially.

"Good-night. I wish I could think that you have enjoyed our talk as
greatly as I have, Miss Jane. I should very much like to be allowed to
repeat it. May I be stupidly personal and tell you that you are very
beautiful?" He bowed, gave her an upward look and went out, finding
his way cleverly among the dancers.

Outside, in the moonlit court, he stood, threw back his head and
laughed, not loudly but consumedly. He was remembering her white face
of mute astonishment. She looked almost as if his compliment had given
her sharp pain.

Morena went laughing to his room in the opposite wing. He wanted to
describe the interview to his wife.

CHAPTER II

MORENA'S WIFE

Betty Morena was sitting in a rustic chair before an open fire, smoking
a cigarette. She was a short woman, so slenderly, even narrowly built,
as to appear overgrown, and she was a mature woman so immaturely shaped
and featured as to appear hardly more than a child. Her curly, russet
hair was parted at the side, her wide, long-lashed eyes were set far
apart, her nose was really a finely modeled snub,--more, a boy's nose
even to a light sprinkling of freckles,--and her mouth was provokingly
the soft, red mouth of a sorrowful child. She lounged far down in her
chair, her slight legs, clad in riding-breeches of perfect cut,
stretched out straight, her limber arms along the arms of the chair,
her chin sunk on her flat chest, and her big, clear eyes staring into
the fire. It was an odd figure of a wife for Jasper Morena, a Jew of
thirty-eight, producer and manager of plays.

When Betty Kane had run away with him, there had been lamentation and
rage in the houses of Kane and of Morena. To the pride of an old
Hebrew family, the marriage even of this wandering son with a Gentile
was fully as degrading as to the pride of the old Tory family was the
marriage with a Jew. Her perverse Gaelic blood on fire with the
insults heaped upon her lover, Betty, seventeen years old, romantic,
clever, would have walked over flint to give her hand to him. That was
ten years ago. Now, when Jasper came into her room, she drew her quick
brows together, puffed at her cigarette, and blinked as though she was
looking at something distasteful