"The main difference," Lindsay said, with a gay half round upon her, "is
that hers has sweetly vanished, while yours"--he made a dramatic
gesture--"walks between us."

"I know. I tried to stiffen her. I appealed to the worst in her on your
behalf. But it wasn't any use. She succumbed, as you say, to her nobler
instincts."

Hilda stabbed a great crisp fallen teak leaf with her parasol, and spent
the grimness of this in twirling it.

"One can so easily get an affair of one's own out of all
proportion--" Duff said. "And I should be sorry--do you really want me
to talk about this?"

"Don't be stupid. Of course."

He took her permission with plain avidity.

"Well, it grew plain to Miss Livingstone, as it will to everybody else
who knows or cares," he said; "I mean chiefly Laura's tremendous
desirability. Her beauty would go for something anywhere, but I don't
want to insist on that. What marks her even more is the wonderful purity
and transparency of her mind; one doesn't find it often now, women's
souls are so clouded with knowledge. I think that sort of thing appeals
especially to me because my own design isn't in the least esoteric. I'm
only a man. Then she was so ludicrously out of her element. A creature
like that should be surrounded by the softest refinement in her daily
life. That was my chance. I could offer her her place. It's not much to
counterbalance what she is, but it helps, roughly speaking, to equalise
matters."

Hilda looked at him with sudden critical interest, missing an emanation
from him. It was his enthusiasm. A cheerfulness had come upon him
instead. Also what he said had something categorical in it, something
crisp and arranged. He himself received benefit from the consideration
of it, and she was aware that if this result followed, her own
"conversion" was of very secondary importance.

"So!" she said meditatively, as they walked.

"After it happens, when it is an accomplished fact, it will be so
plainly right that nobody will think twice about it," Duff went on in an
encouraged voice. "It's odd how one's ideas materialise. I want her
drawing-room to be white and gold, with big yellow silk cushions."

"When its it to happen?"

"Beginning of next cold weather--in not quite a year."

"Ah! then there will be time. Time to get the white and gold furniture.
It wouldn't be my taste quite. Is it Alicia's?"

"It's our own at present, Laura's and mine. We have talked it over
together. An