He turned away with a short, amused laugh.

"So you haven't even the courage of your convictions," he commented.

Magda clenched her hands, driving the nails hard into the soft palms of them. He was an absolute boor, this man who had come to her rescue in the fog! He was taking a brutal advantage of their relative positions to speak to her as no man had ever dared to speak to her before. Or woman either! Even old Lady Arabella would hardly have thrust the naked truth so savagely under her eyes.

And now he had as good as told her that she was a coward! Well, at least he should not have the satisfaction of finding he was right in that respect. She walked straight up to him, her small head held high, in her dark eyes a smouldering fire of fierce resentment.

"So that is what you think, is it?" she said in a low voice of bitter anger. "Well, I have the courage of my convictions." She paused. Then, with an effort: "Yes, I did think you weren't 'suitably impressed,' as you put it. You are perfectly right."

He threw her a swift glance of surprise. Presumably he hadn't anticipated such a candid acknowledgment, but even so he showed no disposition to lay down the probe.

"You didn't think it possible that anyone could meet the Wielitzska without regarding the event as a piece of stupendous good luck and being appropriately overjoyed, did you?" he pursued relentlessly.

Magda pressed her lips together. Then, with an effort:

"No," she admitted.

"And so, just because I treated you as I would any other woman, and made no pretence of fatuous delight over your presence here, you supposed I must be ignorant of your identity? Was that it?"

Magda writhed under the cool, ironical questioning with its undercurrent of keen contempt. Each word stung like the flick of a lash on bare flesh. But she forced herself to answer—and to answer honestly.

"Yes," she said very low. "That was it."

He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

"Comment is superfluous, I think."

She made an impulsive step towards him.

For some unfathomable reason she minded—minded intensely—that this man should hold her in such poor esteem. She wanted to put herself right with him, to justify her attitude in his eyes.

"Have you ever seen me dance?" she asked abruptly.

Surely if he had ever seen that wonderful artistry which she knew was hers, witnessed the half-crazy enthusiasm with which her audience received her, he would make allowance, judge her a little less harshly for what was, after all, a very natural assumption on the part of a stage favourite.

An expression of unwilling admiration came into his eyes.

"Have I seen you dance?" he repeated. "Yes, I have. Several times."

He did not add—which would have been no more than the truth—that during her last winter's season at the Imperial Theatre he had hardly missed a dozen performances.

"Then—then——" Magda spoke with a kind of incredulous appeal. "Can't you understand—just a little?"

"Oh, I understand. I understand perfectly. You've been spoilt and idolised to such an extent that it seems incredible to you to find a man who doesn't immediately fall down and worship you."

Magda twisted her hands together. Once more he was thrusting at her with the rapier of truth. And it hurt—hurt inexplicably.

"Yes, I believe that's—almost true," she acknowledged falteringly. "But if you understand so well, couldn't you—can't you"—with a swift supplicating smile—"be a little more merciful?"

"No. I—I hate your type of woman!"

There was an undertone of passion in his voice. It was almost as though he were fighting against some impulse within himself and the fierceness of the struggle had wrung from him that quick, unvarnished protest.

"Then you despise dancers?"

"Despise? On the contrary, I revere a dancer—the dancer who is a genuine artist." He paused, then went on speaking thoughtfully. "Dancing, to my mind, is one of the most consistent expressions of beauty. It's the sheer symmetry and grace of that body which was made in God's own likeness developed to the utmost limit of human perfection. . . . And the dancer who desecrates the temple of his body is punished proportionately. No art is a harder taskmistress than the art of dancing."

Magda listened breathlessly. This man understood—oh, he understood! Then why did he "hate her type of woman"?

Almost as though he had read her thoughts he pursued:

"As a dancer, an artist—I acknowledge the Wielitzska to be supreme. But as a woman——"

"Yes? As a woman? Go on. What do you know about me as a woman?"

He laughed disagreeably.

"I'd judge that in the making of you your soul got left out," he said drily.

Magda forced a smile.

"I'm afraid I'm very stupid. Do you mind explaining?"

"Does it need explanation?"

"Oh—please!"

"Then—one of my best pals was a man who loved you."

Magda threw him a glance of veiled mockery from beneath her long white lids.

"Surely that should be a recommendation—something in my favour?"

His eyes hardened.

"If you had dealt honestly with him, it might have been. But you drew him on, made him care for you in spite of himself. And then, when he was yours, body and soul, you turned him down! Turned him down—pretended you were surprised—you'd never meant anything! All the old rotten excuses a woman offers when she has finished playing with a man and got bored with him. . . . I've no place for your kind of woman. I tell you"—his tone deepening in intensity—"the wife of any common labourer, who cooks and washes and sews for her man day in, day out, is worth a dozen of you! She knows that love's worth having and worth working for. And she works. You don't. Women like you take a man's soul and play with it, and when you've defiled and defaced it out of all likeness to the soul God gave him, you hand it back to him and think you clear yourself by saying you 'didn't mean it'!"

The bitter speech, harsh with the deeply rooted pain and resentment which had prompted it, battered through Magda's weak defences and found her helpless and unarmed. Once she had uttered a faint cry of protest, tried to check him, but he had not heeded it. After that she had listened with bent head, her breath coming and going unevenly.

When he had finished, the face she lifted to him was white as milk and her mouth trembled.

"Thanks. Well, I've heard my character now," she said unsteadily. "I—I didn't know anyone thought of me—like that."

He stared at her—at the drooping lines of her figure, the quivering lips, at the half-stunned expression of the dark eyes. And suddenly realisation of the enormity of all he had said seemed to come to him. But he did not appear to be at all overwhelmed by it.

"I'm afraid I've transgressed beyond forgiveness now," he said curtly. "But—you rather asked for it, you know, didn't you?"

"Yes," she admitted. "I think I did—ask for it." Suddenly she threw up her head and faced him. "If—if it's any satisfaction to you to know it, I think you've paid off at least some of your friend's score." She looked at him with a curious, almost piteous surprise. "You—you've hurt me!" she whispered passionately. She turned to the door. "I'll go now."

"No!" He stopped her with a hand on her arm, and she obeyed his touch submissively. For a moment he stood looking down at her with an oddly conflicting expression on his face. It was as though he were arguing out some point with himself. All at once he seemed to come to a decision.

"Look, you can't go till the fog clears a bit. Suppose we call a truce? Sit down here"—pulling forward a big easy-chair—"and for the rest of your visit let's behave as though we didn't heartily disapprove of one another."

Magda sank into the chair with that supple grace of limb which made it sheer delight to watch her movements.

"I never said I disapproved of you," she remarked.

He seated himself opposite her, on the other side of the hearth, and regarded her quizzically.

"No. But you do, all the same. Naturally, you would after my candour! And I'd rather you did, too," he added abruptly. "But at least you've no more devoted admirer of your art. You know, dancing appeals to me in a way that nothing else does. My job's painting—"

"House-painting?" interpolated Magda with a smile. Her spirits were rising a little under his new kindliness of manner.

He laughed with sudden boyishness and nodded gaily.

"Why, yes—so long as people continue to cover their wall-space with portraits of themselves."

Magda wondered whether he was possibly a well-known painter. But he gave her no chance to find out, for he continued speaking almost at once.

"I love my art—but a still, flat canvas, however beautifully painted, isn't comparable with the moving, living interpretation of beauty possible to a dancer. I remember, years ago—ten years, quite—seeing a kiddy dancing in a wood." Magda leaned forward. "It was the prettiest thing imaginable. She was all by herself, a little, thin, black-and-white wisp of a thing, with a small, tense face and eyes like black smudges. And she danced as though it were more natural to her than walking. I got her to pose for me at the foot of a tree. The picture of her was my first real success. So you see, I've good reason to be grateful to one dancer!"

Magda caught her breath. She knew now why the man's face had seemed so familiar! He was the artist she had met in the wood at Coverdale the day Sieur Hugh had beaten her—her "Saint Michel"! She was conscious of a queer little thrill of excitement as the truth dawned upon her.

"What was the picture called?" she asked, forcing herself to speak composedly.

"'The Repose of Titania.'"

She nodded. The picture was a very well-known one. Everybody knew by whom it had been painted.

"Then you must be Michael Quarrington?"

"Yes. So now, we've been introduced, haven't we?"

It seemed almost as if he had repented of his former churlish manner, and were endeavouring to atone for it. He talked to her about his work a little, then slid easily into the allied topics of music and books. Finally he took her into an adjoining room, and showed her a small, beloved collection of coloured prints which he had gathered together, recounting various amusing little incidents which had attended the acquisition of this or that one among them with much gusto and a certain quaint humour that she was beginning to recognise as characteristic.

Magda, to whom the study of old prints was by no means an unknown territory, was thoroughly entertained. She found herself enthusing, discussing, arguing points, in a happy spirit of camaraderie with her host which, half an hour earlier, she would have believed impossible.

The end came abruptly. Quarrington chanced to glance out of the window where the street lamps were now glimmering serenely through a clear dusk. The fog had lifted.

"Perhaps it's just as well," he said shortly. "I was beginning—" He checked himself and glanced at her with a sudden stormy light in his eyes.

"Beginning—what?" she asked a little breathlessly. The atmosphere had all at once grown tense with some unlooked-for stress of emotion.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Yes—tell me!"

"I was beginning to forget that you're the 'type of woman I hate,'" he said. And strode out of the room, leaving her startled and unaccountably shaken.

When he came back he had completely reassumed his former non-committal manner.

"There's a taxi waiting for you," he announced. "It's perfectly clear outside now, so I think you will be spared any further adventures on your way home."

He accompanied her into the hall, and as they shook hands she murmured a little diffidently:

"Perhaps we shall meet again some time?"

He drew back sharply.

"No, we shan't meet again." There was something purposeful, almost vehemently so, in the curtly spoken words. "If I had thought that——"

"Yes?" she prompted. "If you had?"

"If I'd thought that," he said quietly, "I shouldn't have dared to risk this last half-hour."

A momentary silence fell between them. Then, with a shrug, he added lightly:

"But we shan't meet again. I'm leaving England next week. That settles it."

Without giving her time to make any rejoinder he opened the street-door and stood aside for her to pass out. A minute later she was in the taxi, and he was standing bare-headed on the pavement beside it.

"Good-bye," she said. "Good-bye—Saint Michel."

His hand closed round hers in a grip that almost crushed the slender fingers.

"You!" he cried hoarsely. There was a note of sudden, desperate recognition in his voice. "You!"

As Magda smiled into his startled eyes—the grey eyes that had burned their way into her memory ten years ago—the taxi slid away into the lamp-lit dusk.



CHAPTER III

FRIARS' HOLM

With a grinding of brakes the taxi slowed up and came to a standstill at Friars' Holm, the quaint old Queen Anne house which Magda had acquired in north London.

Once within the high wall enclosing the old-world garden in which it stood, it was easy enough to imagine oneself a hundred miles from town. Fir and cedar sentinelled the house, and in the centre of the garden there was a lawn of wonderful old turf, hedged round in summer by a riot of roses so that it gleamed like a great square emerald set in a jewelled frame.

Magda entered the house and, crossing the cheerfully lit hall, threw open the door of a room whence issued the sound of someone—obviously a first-rate musician—playing the piano.

As she opened the door the twilight, shot by quivering spears of light from the fire's dancing flames, seemed to rush out at her, bearing with it the mournful, heart-shaking music of some Russian melody. Magda uttered a soft, half-amused exclamation of impatience and switched on the lights.

"All in the dark, Davilof?" she asked in a practical tone of voice calculated to disintegrate any possible fabric of romance woven of firelight and fifths.

The flood of electric light revealed a large, lofty room, devoid of furniture except for a few comfortable chairs grouped together at one end of it, and for a magnificent grand piano at the other. The room appeared doubly large by reason of the fact that the whole of one wall was taken up by four immense panels of looking-glass, cleverly fitted together so that in effect the entire wall was composed of a single enormous mirror. It was in front of this mirror that Magda practised. The remaining three walls were hung with priceless old tapestry woven of sombre green and greys.

As she entered the room a man rose quickly from the piano and came forward to meet her. There was a kind of repressed eagerness in the action, as though he had been waiting with impatience for her coming.

He was a striking-looking man, tall, and built with the slender-limbed grace of a foreigner. Golden-brown hair, worn rather longer than fashion dictates, waved crisply over his head, and the moustache and small Vandyck beard which partially concealed the lower part of his face were of the same warmly golden colour.

The word "musician" was written all over him—in the supple, capable hands, in the careless stoop of his loosely knit shoulders, and, more than all, in the imaginative hazel eyes with their curious mixture of abstraction and fire. They rather suggested lightning playing over some dreaming pool.

Magda shook hands with him carelessly.

"We shall have to postpone the practice as I'm so late, Davilof," she said. "I had a smash-up in the fog. My car ran into a bus—"

"And you are hurt?" Davilof broke in sharply, his voice edged with fear.

"No, no. I was stunned for a minute and then afterwards I fainted, but I'm quite intact otherwise."

"You are sure—sure?"

"Quite." Hearing the keen anxiety in his tone she smiled at him reassuringly and held out a friendly hand. "I'm all right—really, Antoine."

He took the hand in both his.

"Thank God!" he said fervently.

Antoine Davilof had lived so long in England that he spoke without trace of accent, though he sometimes gave an unEnglish twist to the phrasing of a sentence, but his quick emotion and the simplicity with which he made no effort to conceal it stamped him unmistakably as a foreigner.

A little touched, Magda allowed her hand to remain in his.

"Why, Davilof!" She chided him laughingly. "You're quite absurdly upset about it."

"I could not have borne it if you had been hurt," he declared vehemently. "You ought not to go about by yourself. It's horrible to think of you—in a street accident—alone!"

"But I wasn't alone. A man who was in the other half of the accident—the motor-bus half—played the good Samaritan and carried me into his house, which happened to be close by. He looked after me very well, I assure you."

Davilof released her hand abruptly. His face darkened.

"And this man? Who was he?" he demanded jealously. "I hate to think of any man—a stranger—touching you."

"Nonsense! Would you have preferred me to remain lying in the middle of the road?"

"You know I would not. But I'd rather some woman had looked after you. Do you know who the man was?"

"I did not—at first."

"But you do now. Who was it?"

"No one you know, I think," she answered provokingly. His eyes flashed.

"Why are you making a mystery about it?" he asked suspiciously. "You're keeping something from me! Who was this man? Tell me his name."

Magda froze.

"My dear Antoine! Why this air of high tragedy?" she said lightly. "And what on earth has it to do with you who the man was?"

"You know what it has to do with me——"

"With my accompanist?"—raising her brows delicately.

"No!"—with sudden violence—"With the man who loves you! I'm that—and you know it, Magda! Could I play for you as I do if I did not understand your every mood and emotion? You know I couldn't! And then you ask what it matters to me when some unknown man has held you in his arms, carried you into his house—kissed you, perhaps, while you were unconscious!"—his imagination running suddenly riot.

"Stop! You're going too far!" Magda checked him sharply. "You're always telling me you love me. I don't want to hear it." She paused, then added cruelly: "I want you for playing my accompaniments, Davilof. That's all. Do you understand?"

His eyes blazed. With a quick movement he stepped in front of her.

"I'm a man—as well as an accompanist," he said hoarsely. "One day you'll have to reckon with the man, Magda!"

There was a new, unaccustomed quality in his voice. Hitherto she had not taken his ardour very seriously. He was a Pole and a musician, with all the temperament that might be expected from such a combination, and she had let it go at that, pushing his love aside with the careless hand of a woman to whom the incense of men's devotion has been so freely offered as to have become commonplace. But now the new ring of determination, of something unexpectedly dogged in his voice, poignantly recalled the warning uttered by Lady Arabella earlier in the day.

Magda's nerve wavered. A momentary panic assailed her. Then she intuitively struck the right note.

"Ah, Davilof, don't worry me now—not to-night!" she said appealingly. "I'm tired. It's been a bit of a strain—the accident and—and——"

"Forgive me!" In a moment he was all penitence—overwhelmed with compunction. "Forget it! I've behaved like a brute. I ought to have seen that you were worn out."

He was beside himself with remorse.

"It's all right, Antoine." She smiled forgiveness at him. "Only I felt—I felt I couldn't stand any more to-night. I suppose it's taken it out of me more than I knew—the shock, and fainting like that."

"Of course it has. You ought to rest. I wish Mrs. Grey were in."

"Is she not?"

"No. The maid told me she was out when I came, and she hasn't returned yet."

"She's been held up by the fog, I expect," answered Magda. "Never mind. I'll sit here—in this big chair—and you shall switch off these glaring lights and play to me, Antoine. That will rest me better than anything."

She was a little sorry for the man—trying to make up to him for the pain she knew she had inflicted a moment before, and there was a dangerous sweetness in her voice.

Davilof's eyes kindled. He stooped swiftly and kissed her hand.

"You are too good to me!" he said huskily.

Then, while she lay back restfully in a chair which he heaped with cushions for her, he played to her, improvising as he played—slow, dreaming melodies that soothed and lulled but held always an undertone of passionate appeal. The man himself spoke in his music; his love pleaded with her in its soft, beseeching cadences.

But Magda failed to hear it. Her thoughts were elsewhere—back with the man who, that afternoon, had first rescued her and afterwards treated her with blunt candour that had been little less than brutal. She felt sore and resentful—smarting under the same dismayed sense of surprise and injustice as a child may feel who receives a blow instead of an anticipated caress.

Indulged and flattered by everyone with whom she came in contact, it had been like a slap in the face to find someone—more particularly someone of the masculine persuasion—who, far from bestowing the admiration and homage she had learned to look for as a right, quite openly regarded her with contemptuous disapproval—and made no bones about telling her so.

His indictment of her had left nothing to the imagination. She felt stunned, and, for the first time in her life, a little unwilling doubt of herself assaulted her. Was she really anything at all like the woman Michael Quarrington had pictured? A woman without heart or conscience—the "kind of woman he had no place for"?

She winced a little at the thought. It was strange how much she minded his opinion—the opinion of a man whom she had only met by chance and whom she was very unlikely ever to meet again. He himself had certainly evinced no anxiety to renew the acquaintance. And this, too, fretted her in some unaccountable way.

She could not analyse her own emotions. She felt hurt and angry and ashamed in the same breath—and all because an unknown man, an absolute stranger, had told her in no measured terms exactly what he thought of her!

Only—he was not really quite a stranger! He was the "Saint Michel" of her childhood days, the man with whom she had unconsciously compared those other men whom the passing years had brought into her life—and always to their disadvantage.

The first time she had seen him in the woods at Coverdale was the day when Hugh Vallincourt had beaten her; she had been smarting with the physical pain and humiliation of it. And now, this second time they had met, she had been once more forced to endure that strange and unaccustomed experience called pain. Only this time she felt as though her soul had been beaten, and it was Saint Michel himself who had scourged her.

The door at the far end of the room opened suddenly and a welcome voice broke cheerfully across the bitter current of her thoughts.

"Well, here I am at last! Has Magda arrived home yet?"

Davilof ceased playing abruptly and the speaker paused on the threshold of the room, peering into the dusk. Magda rose from her seat by the fire and switched on one of the electric burners.

"Yes, here I am," she said. "Did you get held up by the fog, Gillian?"

The newcomer advanced into the circle of light. She was a small, slight woman, though the furs she was wearing served to conceal the slenderness of her figure. Someone had once said of her that "Mrs. Grey was a charming study in sepia." The description was not inapt. Eyes and hair were brown as a beechnut, and a scattering of golden-brown freckles emphasised the warm tints of a skin as soft as velvet.

"Did I get held up?" she repeated. "My dear, I walked miles—miles, I tell you!—in that hideous fog. And then found I'd been walking entirely in the wrong direction! I fetched up somewhere down Notting Hill Gate way, and at last by the help of heaven and a policeman discovered the Tube station. So here I am. But if I could have come across a taxi I'd have been ready to buy it, I was so tired!"

"Poor dear!" Magda was duly sympathetic. "We'll have some tea. You'll stay, Davilof?"

"I think not, thanks. I'm dining out"—with a glance at his watch. "And I shan't have too much time to get home and change as it is."

Magda held out her hand.

"Good-bye, then. Thank you for keeping me company till Gillian came."

There was a sudden sweetness of gratitude in the glance she threw at him which fired his blood. He caught her hand and carried it to his lips.

"The thanks are mine," he said in a stifled voice. And swinging round on his heel he left the room abruptly, quite omitting to make his farewells to Mrs. Grey.

The latter looked across at Magda with a gleam of mirth in her brown eyes. Then she shook her head reprovingly.

"Will you never learn wisdom, Magda?" she asked, subsiding into a chair and extending a pair of neatly shod feet to the fire's warmth.

Magda laughed a little.

"Well, it won't be the fault of my friends if I don't!" she returned ruefully. "Marraine expended a heap of eloquence over my misdeeds this afternoon."

"Lady Arabella? I'm glad to hear it. Though she has about as much chance of producing any permanent result as the gentleman who occupied his leisure time in rolling a stone uphill."

"Cat!" Magda made a small grimace at her. "Ah, here's some tea!" Melrose, known among Magda's friends as "the perfect butler," had come noiselessly into the room and was arranging the tea paraphernalia with the reverential precision of one making preparation for some mystic rite. "Perhaps when you've had a cup you'll feel more amiable—that is, if I give you lots of sugar."

"What was the text of Lady Arabella's homily?" inquired Gillian presently, as she sipped her tea.

"Oh, that boy, Kit Raynham," replied Magda impatiently. "It appears I'm blighting his young prospects—his professional ones, I mean. Though I don't quite see why an attack of calf-love for me should wreck his work as an architect!"

"I do—if he spends his time sketching 'the Wielitzska' in half a dozen different poses instead of making plans for a garden city."

Magda smiled involuntarily.

"Does he do that?" she said. "But how ridiculous of him!"

"It's merely indicative of his state of mind," returned Gillian. She gazed meditatively into the fire. "You know, Magda, I think it will mean the end of our friendship when Coppertop reaches years of discretion."

Coppertop was Gillian's small son, a young person of seven, who owed his cognomen to the crop of flaming red curls which adorned his round button of a head.

Magda laughed.

"Pouf! By the time that happens I shall be quite old—and harmless."

Gillian shook her head.

"Your type is never harmless, my dear. Unless you fall in love, you'll be an unexploded mine till the day of your death."

"That nearly occurred to-day, by the way," vouchsafed Magda tranquilly. "In which case,"—smiling—"you'd have been spared any further anxiety on Coppertop's account."

"What do you mean?" demanded Gillian, startled.

"I mean that I've had an adventure this afternoon. We got smashed up in the fog."

"Oh, my dear! How dreadful! How did it happen?"

"Something collided with the car and shot us bang into a motor-bus, and then, almost at the same moment, something else charged into us from behind. So there was a pretty fair mix-up."

"Why didn't you tell me before! Was anyone badly hurt? And how did you get home?" Gillian's questions poured out excitedly.

"No, no one was badly hurt. I got a blow on the head, and fainted. So a man who'd been inside the bus we ran into performed the rescuing stunt. His house was close by, and he carried me in there and proceeded to dose me with sal volatile first and tea afterwards. He wound up by presenting me with an unvarnished summary of his opinion of the likes of me."

There was an unwontedly hard note in Magda's voice as she detailed the afternoon's events, and Gillian glanced at her sharply.

"I don't understand. Was he a strait-laced prig who disapproved of dancing, do you mean?"

"Nothing of the sort. He had a most comprehensive appreciation of the art of dancing. His disapproval was entirely concentrated on me—personally."

"But how could it be—since he didn't know you?"

Magda gave a little grin.

"You mean it would have been quite comprehensible if he had known me?" she observed ironically.

The other laughed.

"Don't be so provoking! You know perfectly well what I meant! You deserve that I should answer 'yes' to that question."

"Do, if you like."

"I would—only I happen to know you a good deal better than you know yourself."

"What do you know about me, then, that I don't?"

Gillian's nice brown eyes smiled across at her.

"I know that, somewhere inside you, you've got the capacity for being as sweet and kind and tender and self-sacrificing as any woman living—if only something would happen to make it worth while. I wish—I wish to heaven you'd fall in love!"

"I'm not likely to. I'm in love with my art. It gives you a better return than love for any man."

"No," answered Gillian quietly. "No. You're wrong. Tony died when we'd only been married a year. But that year was worth the whole rest of life put together. And—I've got Coppertop."

Magda leaned forward suddenly and kissed her.

"Dear Gillyflower!" she said. "I'm so glad you feel like that—bless you! I wish I could. But I never shall. I was soured in the making, I think"—laughing rather forlornly. "I don't trust love. It's the thing that hurts and tortures and breaks a woman—as my mother was hurt and tortured and broken." She paused. "No, preserve me from falling in love!" she added more lightly. "'A Loaf of Bread, and Thou beside me in the Wilderness' doesn't appeal to me in the least."

"It will one day," retorted Gillian oracularly. "In the meantime you might go on telling me about the man who fished you out of the smash. Was he young? And good-looking? Perhaps he is destined to be your fate."

"He was rather over thirty, I should think. And good-looking—quite. But he 'hates my type of woman,' you'll be interested to know. So that you can put your high hopes back on the top shelf again."

"Not at all," declared Gillian briskly. "There's nothing like beginning with a little aversion."

Magda smiled reminiscently.

"If you'd been present at our interview, you'd realise that 'a little aversion' is a cloying euphemism for the feeling exhibited by my late preserver."

"What was he like, then?"

"At first, because I wouldn't take the sal volatile—you know how I detest the stuff!—and sit still where he'd put me like a good little girl, he ordered me about as though I were a child of six. He absolutely bullied me! Then it apparently occurred to him to take my moral welfare in hand, and I should judge he considered that Jezebel and Delilah were positively provincial in their methods as compared with me."

"Nonsense! If he didn't know you, why should he suppose himself competent to form any opinion about you at all—good, bad, or indifferent?"

"I don't know," replied Magda slowly. Then, speaking with sudden defiance: "Yes, I do know! A pal of his had—had cared about me some time or other, and I'd turned him down. That's why."

"Oh, Magda!" There was both reproach and understanding in Gillian's voice.

Magda shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, if he wanted to pay off old scores on his pal's behalf, he succeeded," she said mirthlessly.

Gillian looked at her in surprise. She had never seen Magda quite like this before; her sombre eyes held a curious strained look like those of some wild thing of the forest caught in a trap and in pain.

"And you don't know who he was—I mean the man who came to your help and then lectured you?"

"Yes, I do. It was Michael Quarrington, the artist."

"Michael Quarrington? Why, he has the reputation of being a most charming man!"

Magda stared into the fire.

"I dare say he might have a great deal of charm if he cared to exert it. Apparently, however, he didn't think I was worth the effort."



CHAPTER IV

IN THE MIRROR ROOM

Shouts of mirth came jubilantly from the Mirror Room as Davilof made his way thither one afternoon a few days later. The shrill peal of a child's laughter rose gaily above the lower note of women's voices, and when the accompanist opened the door it was to discover Magda completely engrossed in giving Coppertop a first dancing lesson, while Gillian sat stitching busily away at some small nether garments afflicted with rents and tears in sundry places. Every now and again she glanced up with softly amused eyes to watch her son's somewhat unsteady efforts in the Terpsichorean art.

Coppertop, a slim young reed in his bright green knitted jersey, was clinging with one hand to a wooden bar attached to the wall which served Magda for the "bar practice" which constitutes part of every dancer's daily work, while Magda, holding his other hand in hers, essayed to instruct him in the principle of "turning out"—that flexible turning of the knees towards the side which gives so much facility of movement.

"Point your toes sideways—so," directed Magda. "This one towards me—like that." She stooped and placed his foot in position. "Now, kick out! Try to kick me!"

Coppertop tried—and succeeded, greeting his accomplishment with shrieks of delight.

It was just at this moment that Davilof appeared on the scene, pausing abruptly in the doorway as he caught sight of Magda's laughing face bent above the fiery red head. There was something very charming in her expression of eager, light-hearted abandonment to the fun of the moment.

At the sound of the opening door Coppertop wriggled out of her grasp like an eel, twisting his lithe young body round to see who the new arrival might be. His face fell woefully as he caught sight of Davilof.

"Oh, you can't never have come already to play for the Fairy Lady!" he exclaimed in accents of dire disappointment.

"Fairy Lady" was the name he had bestowed upon Magda when, very early in their acquaintance, she had performed for his sole and particular benefit a maturer edition of the dance she had evolved as a child—the dance with which she had so much astonished Lady Arabella. Nowadays it figured prominently on her programmes as "The Hamadryad," and was enormously popular.

"It's not never three o'clock!" wailed Coppertop disconsolately, as Davilof dangled his watch in front of him.

"I think it is, small son," interpolated Gillian, gathering together her sewing materials. "Come along. We must leave the Fairy Lady to practise now, because she's got to dance to half the people in London to-morrow."

"Must I really go?" appealed Coppertop, beseeching Magda with a pair of melting green eyes.

She dropped a light kiss on the top of his red curls.

"'Fraid so, Coppertop," she said. "You wouldn't want Fairy Lady to dance badly and tumble down, would you?"

But Coppertop was not to be taken in so easily.

"Huh!" he scoffed. "You couldn't tumble down—not never!"

"Still, you mustn't be greedy, Topkins," urged Magda persuasively. "Remember all the grown-up people who want me to dance to them! I can't keep it all for one little boy." He stared at her for a moment in silence. Suddenly he flung his arms round her slender hips, clutching her tightly, and hid his face against her skirt.

"Oh, Fairy Lady, you are so booful—so booful!" he whispered in a smothered voice. Then, with a big sigh: "But one little boy won't be greedy." He turned to his mother. "Come along, mummie!" he commanded superbly. And trotted out of the room beside her with his small head well up.

Left alone, Davilof and Magda smiled across at one another.

"Funny little person, isn't he?" she said.

The musician nodded.

"Grown-ups might possibly envy the freedom of speech permitted to childhood," he said quietly. Then, still more quietly: "'Fairy Lady, you are so beautiful!'"

"But you're not a child, so don't poach Coppertop's preserves!" retorted Magda swiftly. "Let's get to work, Antoine. I'll just change into my practice-kit and then I want to run through the 'Swan-Maiden's' dance. You fix the lighting."

She vanished into an adjoining room, while Davilof proceeded to switch off most of the burners, leaving only those which illumined the space in front of the great mirror. The remainder of the big room receded into a grey twilight encircling the patch of luminance.

Presently Magda reappeared wearing a loose tunic of some white silken material, girdled at the waist, but yet leaving her with perfect freedom of limb.

Davilof watched her as she came down the long room with the feather-light, floating walk of the trained dancer, and something leaped into his eyes that was very different from mere admiration—something that, taken in conjunction with Lady Arabella's caustic comments of a few days ago, might have warned Magda had she seen it.

But with her thoughts preoccupied by the work in hand she failed to notice it, and, advancing till she faced the great mirror, she executed a few steps in front of it, humming the motif of The Swan-Maiden music under her breath.

"Play, Antoine," she threw at him over her shoulder.

Davilof hesitated, made a movement towards her, then wheeled round abruptly and went to the piano. A moment later the exquisite, smoothly rippling music which he had himself written for the Swan-Maiden dance purled out into the room.

The story of the Swan-Maiden had been taken from an old legend which told of a beautiful maiden and the youth who loved her.

According to the narrative, the pair were unfortunate enough to incur the displeasure of the evil fairy Ritmagar, and the latter, in order to punish them, transformed the maiden into a white swan, thus separating the hapless lovers for ever. Afterwards, the disconsolate youth, bemoaning the cruelty of fate, used to wander daily along the shores of the lake where the maiden was compelled to dwell in her guise of a swan, and eventually Ritmagar, apparently touched to a limited compassion, permitted the Swan-Maiden to resume her human form once a day during the hour immediately preceding sunset. But the condition was attached that she must always return to the lake ere the sun sank below the horizon, when she would be compelled to reassume her shape of a swan. Should she fail to return by the appointed time, death would be the inevitable consequence.

Every reader of fairy tales—and certainly anyone who knows anything at all about being in love—can guess the sequel. Comes a day when the lovers, absorbed in their love-making, forget the flight of time, so that the unhappy maiden returns to the shore of the lake to find that the sun has already dipped below the horizon. She falls on her knees, beseeching the witch Ritmagar for mercy, but no answer is vouchsafed, and gradually the Swan-Maiden finds herself growing weaker and weaker, until at last death claims her.

A dance, based upon this legend, had been devised for Magda in conjunction with Vladimir Ravinski, the brilliant Russian dancer, he taking the lover's part, and the whole tragic little drama was designed to terminate with a solo dance by Magda as the dying Swan-Maiden. Davilof had written the music for it, and the dance was to be performed at the Imperial Theatre for the first time the following week.

Davilof played ever more and more softly as the dance drew to its close. The note of lament sounded with increasing insistence through the slowing ripple of the accompaniment, and at last, as Magda sank to the ground in a piteous attitude that somehow suggested both the drooping grace of a dying swan and the innocence and helplessness of the hapless maiden, the music died away into silence.

There was a little pause. Then Davilof sprang to this feet.

"By God, Magda! You're magnificent!" he exclaimed with the spontaneous appreciation of one genuine artist for another.

Magda raised her head and looked up at him with vague, startled eyes. She still preserved the pose on which the dance had ceased, and had hardly yet returned to the world of reality from that magic world into which her art had transported her.

The burning enthusiasm in Davilof's excited tones recalled her abruptly.

"Was it good—was it really good?" she asked a little shakily.

"Good?" he said. "It was superb!"

He held out his hands and she laid hers in them without thinking, allowing him to draw her to her feet beside him.

She stood quite still, breathing rather quickly from her recent exertions and supported by the close clasp of his hands on hers. Her lips were a little parted, her slight breast rose and fell unevenly, and a faint rose-colour glowed beneath the ivory pallor of her skin.

Suddenly Davilof's grip tightened.

"You beautiful thing!" he exclaimed huskily. "Magda——"

The next moment, with a swift, ungoverned movement, he caught her to him and was crushing her in his arms.

"Antoine! . . . Let me go!"

But the pressure of her soft, pulsing body against his own sent the blood racing through his veins. He smothered the words with his mouth on hers, kissing her breathless with a headlong passion that defied restraint—slaking his longing for her as a man denied water may at last slake his thirst at some suddenly discovered pool.

Magda felt herself powerless as a leaf caught up in a whirlwind—swept suddenly into the hot vehemence of a man's desire while she was yet unstrung and quivering from the emotional strain of the Swan-Maiden's dance, every nerve of her quickened to a tingling sentience by the underlying passion of the music.

With an effort she wrenched herself out of his arms and ran from him blindly into the furthest corner of the room. She had no clear idea of making for the door, but only of getting away—anywhere—heedless of direction. An instant later she was standing with her back to the wall, leaning helplessly against the ancient tapestry that clothed it. In that dim corner of the vast room her slim figure showed faintly limned against its blurred greens and greys like that of some pallid statue.

"Go . . . go away!" she gasped.

Davilof laughed triumphantly. Nothing could hold him now. The barriers of use and habit were down irrevocably.

"Go away?" he said. "No, I'm not going away."

He strode straight across the space that intervened between them. She watched his coming with dilated eyes. Her hands, palms downwards, were pressed hard against the woven surface of the tapestry on either side of her.

As he approached she shrank back, her whole body taut and straining against the wall. Then she bent her head and flung up her arms, curving them to shield her face. Davilof could just see the rounded whiteness of them, glimmering like pale pearl next the satin sheen of night-black hair.

With a stifled cry he sprang forward and gripped them in his strong, supple hands, drawing them down inexorably.

"Kiss me!" he demanded fiercely. "Magda, kiss me!"

She shook her head, struggling for speech.

"No!" she gasped. "No!"

She glanced desperately round, but he had her hemmed in, prisoned against the wall.

"Kiss me!" he repeated unsteadily. "You—you'd better, Magda."

"And if I don't?" she forced the words through her stiff lips.

"But you will!" he said hoarsely. "You will!"

There was a dangerous note in his voice. The man had got beyond the stage to be played with. In the silence of the room Magda could hear his laboured breathing, feel his heart leaping against her own soft breast crushed against his. It frightened her.

"You'll let me go if I do?" The words seemed to run into each other in her helpless haste.

"I'll let you go."

"Very well."

Slowly, reluctantly she lifted her face to his and kissed him. But the touch of her lips on his scattered the last vestige of his self-control.

"My beloved . . . Beloved!"

He seized her roughly in his arms. She felt his kisses overwhelming her, burning against her closed eyelids, bruising her soft mouth and throat.

"I love you . . . worship you——"

"Let me go!" she cried shrilly, struggling against him. "Let me go—you promised it!"

He released her, drawing slowly back, his arms falling unwillingly away from her.

"Oh, yes," he muttered confusedly. "I did promise."

The instant she felt his grip relax, Magda sprang forward and switched on the centre burners, flooding the room with a blaze of light, and in the sudden glare she and Davilof stood staring silently at each other.

With the springing up of the lights it was as though a spell had broken. The strained, hunted expression left Magda's face. She wasn't frightened any longer. Davilof was no more the man whose sudden passion had surged about her, threatening to break down all defences and overwhelm her. He was just Davilof, her accompanist, who, like half the men of her acquaintance, was more or less in love with her and who had overstepped the boundary which she had very definitely marked out between herself and him.

She regarded him stormily.

"Have you gone mad?" she asked contemptuously.

He returned her look, his eyes curiously brilliant. Then he laughed suddenly.

"Mad?" he said. "Yes, I think I am mad. Mad with love for you! Magda"—he came and stood close beside her—"don't send me away! Don't say you can't care for me! You don't love me now—but I could teach you." His voice deepened. "I love you so much. Oh, sweetest!—Soul of me! Love is so beautiful. Let me teach you how beautiful it is!"

Magda drew back.

"No," she said. The brief negative fell clear and distinct as a bell.

"I won't take no," he returned hotly. "I won't take no. I want you. Good God! Don't you understand? My love for you isn't just a boy's infatuation that you can dismiss with a word. It's all of me. I worship you! Haven't I been with you day after day, worked with you, followed your every mood—shared your very soul with you? You're mine! Mine, because I understand you. You've shown me all you thought, all you felt. You couldn't have done that if I hadn't meant something to you."

"Certainly you meant something to me. You meant an almost perfect accompanist. Why should you have imagined you meant more? I gave you no reason to think so."

"No reason?"

It was as though the two short words were the key which unlocked the floodgates of some raging torrent. Magda could never afterwards recall the words he used. She only knew they beat upon her with the cruel, lancinating sharpness of hail driven by the wind.

She had treated him much as other men, evoking the love of his ardent temperament by that subtle witchery which was second nature to her and which can be such a potent weapon in the hands of a woman whose own emotions remain untouched. And now the thwarted passion of the lover and the savage anger of a man who felt himself deceived and duped broke over her in a resistless storm—an outburst so bitter and so trenchant that for the moment she remained speechless before it, buffeted into helpless, resentful silence. When he ceased, he had stripped her of every rag of feminine defence.

"Have you finished?" she asked in a stifled voice.

She made no attempt to palliate matters or to refute anything he had said. In his present frame of mind it would have been useless pointing out to him that she had treated him no differently from other men. He was a Pole, and he had caught fire where others would merely have glowed smoulderingly.

"Yes," he rejoined sullenly. "I've finished."

"So much the better."

He regarded her speculatively.

"What are you made of, I wonder? Does it mean nothing to you that a man has given you his very best—all that he has?"

She appeared to reflect a moment.

"I'm afraid it doesn't. There's only one thing really means much to me—and that is my art. And Lady Arabella," she added after a pause. "She'll always mean a good deal."

She sat down by the fire and held out her hands to its warmth. The slender fingers seemed almost transparent, glowing rosily in the firelight. Davilof turned to go.

"Good-bye, then," he said curtly.

"Good-bye." Magda nodded indifferently. Then, carelessly: "I shall want you to-morrow, Davilof—same time."

He swung round.

"I will never play for you again. Did you imagine I should?"

She smiled at him—that slow, subtle smile of hers with its hint of mockery.

"You won't be able to keep away," she replied.

"I will never play for you again," he repeated. "Never! I will teach myself to hate you."

She shook her head lightly.

"Impossible, Davilof."

"It's not impossible. There's very little difference between love and hate—sometimes. And I want all or nothing."

"I'm afraid it must be nothing, then."

"We shall see. But if I can't have you, I swear no other man shall!"

She glanced up at him, lifting her brows a little.

"Aren't you going too far, Antoine? You can hate me, if you like, or love me—it's a matter of indifference to me which you do. But I don't propose to allow you to arrange my life for me. And in any case"—after a moment—"I'm not likely to fall in love—with you or anyone else."

"You think not?" He stood looking down at her sombrely. "You'll fall in love right enough some day. And when you do it will be all or nothing with you, too. You're that kind. Love will take you—and break you, Magda."

He spoke slowly, with an odd kind of tensity. To Magda it seemed almost as if his quiet speech held the gravity of prophecy, and she shivered a little.

"And when that time comes, then you'll come back to me," he added.

Magda threw up her head, defying him.

"You propose to be waiting round to pick up the pieces, then?" she suggested nonchalantly.

But only the sound of the closing door answered her. Davilof had gone.



CHAPTER V

THE SWAN-MAIDEN

Lady Arabella was in her element. She had two brilliant and unattached young men dining with her—one, Michael Quarrington, a lion in the artistic world, and the other, Antoine Davilof, who showed unmistakable symptoms of developing sooner or later into a lion in the musical world.

It was Davilof who was responsible for the artist's presence at Lady Arabella's dinner table. She had expressed—in her usual autocratic manner—a wish that he should be presented to her, and had determined upon the evening of the first performance of The Swan-Maiden as the appointed time.

Davilof appeared doubtful, and declared that Quarrington was leaving England and had already fixed the date of his departure.

"He's crossing from Dover the very day before the one you want him to dine with you," he told her.

But Lady Arabella swept his objections aside with regal indifference.

"Crossing, is he?" she snapped. "Well, tell him I want him to dine here and go to the show with us afterwards. He'll cross the day after, you'll find—if he crosses at all!" she wound up enigmatically.

So it came about that her two lions, the last-arrived artist and the soon-to-arrive musician, were both dining with her on the appointed evening.

Lady Arabella adored lions. Also, notwithstanding her seventy years, she retained as much original Eve in her composition as a girl of seventeen, and she adored young men.

In particular, she decided that she approved of Michael Quarrington. She liked the clean English build of him. She liked his lean, square jaw and the fair hair with the unruly kink in it which reminded her of a certain other young man—who had been young when she was young—and to whom she had bade farewell at her parents' inflexible decree more than fifty years ago. Above all, she liked the artist's eyes—those grey, steady eyes with their look of reticence so characteristic of the man himself.

Reticence was an asset in her ladyship's estimation. It showed good sense—and it offered provocative opportunities for a battle of wits such as her soul loved.

"Have you seen my god-daughter dance, Mr. Quarrington?" she asked him.

"Yes, several times."

His tone was non-committal and she eyed him sharply.

"Don't admire dancing, do you?" she threw at him.

Quarrington regarded her with a humorous twinkle.

"And I an artist? How can you ask, Lady Arabella?"

"Well, you sounded supremely detached," she grumbled.

"I think Mademoiselle Wielitzska's dancing the loveliest thing I have ever seen," he returned simply.

The old woman vouchsafed him a smile.

"Thank you," she answered. "I enjoyed that quite as much as I used to enjoy being told I'd a pretty dimple when I was a girl."

"You have now," rejoined Quarrington audaciously.

Lady Arabella's eyes sparkled. She loved a neatly turned compliment.

"Thank you again. But it's a pity to waste your pretty speeches on an old woman of seventy."

"I don't," retorted the artist gravely. "I reserve them for the young people I know of that age."

She laughed delightedly. Then, turning to Davilof, she drew him into the conversation and the talk became general.

Later, as they were all three standing in the hall preparatory to departure, she flashed another of her sudden remarks at Quarrington.

"I understand you came to my god-daughter's rescue in that bad fog last week?"

The quiet grey eyes revealed nothing.

"I was privileged to be some little use," he replied lightly.

"I hardly gathered you regarded it as a privilege," observed her ladyship drily.

The shaft went home. A fleeting light gleamed for a moment in the grey eyes. Davilof was standing a few paces away, being helped into his coat by a man-servant, and Quarrington spoke low and quickly.

"She told you?" he said. There was astonishment—resentment, almost—in his voice.

"No, no." Lady Arabella, smiling to herself, reassured him hastily. "It was a shot in the dark on my part. Magda never confides details. She hands you out an unadorned slice of fact and leaves you to interpret it as you choose. But if you know her rather well—as I do—and can add two and two together and make five or any unlikely number of them, why, then you can fill in some of the blanks for yourself."

She glanced at him with impish amusement as she moved towards the door.

"Come along, Davilof," she said. "I suppose you want to hear your own music—even if Magda's dancing no longer interests you?"

Davilof gave her his arm down the steps.

"What do you mean, miladi?" he asked. "There is no more beautiful dancing in the world."

"Then why have you jacked up your job of accompanist? Shoes beginning to pinch a little, eh?"—shrewdly.

"You mean I grow too big for my boots? No, madame. If I were the greatest musician in Europe, instead of being merely Antoine Davilof, it could only be a source of pride to be asked to accompany the Wielitzska."

Lady Arabella paused on the pavement, her foot on the step of the limousine.

"Then how is it that Mrs. Grey accompanies her now? She was playing for her at the Duchess of Lichbrooke's the other evening.

"Magda didn't tell you, then?"

"No, she didn't; or I'd not be wasting my breath in asking you. I asked her, and she said you had taken to playing wrong notes."

A faint smile curved the lips above the small golden beard.

"Then it must be true. Undoubtedly I played wrong notes, miladi."

"Very careless of you, I'm sure." Under the garish light of a neighbouring street-lamp her keen old eyes met his significantly. "Or—very imprudent, Davilof. You need the tact of the whole Diplomatic Service to deal with Magda. And you ought to know it."

"True, miladi. But I was not designed for diplomacy, and a man can only use the weapons heaven has given him."

"I wouldn't have suggested heaven as invariably the source of your inspirations," retorted Lady Arabella. And hopped into the car.

They arrived at the Imperial Theatre to find Mrs. Grey already seated in Lady Arabella's box. Someone else was there, too—old Virginie, with her withered-apple cheeks and bright brown, bird-like eyes, still active and erect and very little altered from the Virginie of ten years before. Just as she had devoted herself to Diane, so now she devoted herself to Diane's daughter, and no first performance of a new dance of the Wielitzska's took place without Virginie's presence somewhere in the house. To-night, Lady Arabella had invited her into her box and Virginie was a quivering bundle of excitement. She rose from her seat at the back of the box as the newcomers entered.

"Sit down, Virginie." Lady Arabella nodded kindly to the Frenchwoman. "And pull your chair forward. You'll see nothing back there, and there is plenty of room for us all."

"Merci, madame. Madame est bien gentille." Virginie's voice was fervent with ecstatic gratitude as she resumed her seat and waited expectantly for Magda's appearance.

Other dances, performed principally by lesser lights of the company and affording only a briefly tantalising glimpse of Magda herself, preceded the chief event of the evening. But at last the next item on the programme read as The Swan-Maiden (adapted from an Old Legend), and a tremour of excitement, a sudden hush of eager anticipation, rippled through the audience like wind over grass.

Slowly the heavy silken curtains drew to either side of the stage, revealing a sunlit glade. In the background glimmered the still waters of a lake, while at the foot of a tree, in an attitude of tranquil repose, lay the Swan-Maiden—Magda. One white, naked arm was curved behind her head, pillowing it, the other lay lightly across her body, palm upward, with the rosy-tipped fingers curled inwards a little, like a sleeping child's. She looked infinitely young as she lay there, her slender, pliant limbs relaxed in untroubled slumber.

Lady Arabella, with Quarrington sitting next to her in the box, heard the quick intake of his breath as he leaned suddenly forward.

"Yes, it has quite a familiar look," she observed. "Reminds me of your 'Repose of Titania.'"

His eyes flickered inquiringly over her face, but it was evident that hers had been merely a chance remark. The old lady had obviously no idea as to who it was who had posed for the Titania of the picture. That was one of the "slices of fact" which Magda had omitted to hand out when recounting her adventure in the fog to her godmother. Quarrington leaned back in his chair satisfied.

"It's not unlike," he agreed carelessly.

Then the entrance of Vladimir Ravinski, the lovelorn youth of the legend, riveted his attention on the stage.

The dance which followed was exquisite. The Russian was a beautiful youth, like a sun-god with his flying yellow locks and glorious symmetry of body, and the pas de deux between him and Magda was a thing to marvel at—sweeping through the whole gamut of love's emotion, from the first shy, delicate hesitancy of worshipping boy and girl to the rapturous abandon of mated lovers.

Then across the vibrant, pulsating scene fell the deadly shadow of the witch Ritmagar. The stage darkened, the violins in the orchestra skirled eerily in chromatic showers of notes, and the hunched figure of Ritmagar approaching menaced the lovers. A wild dance followed, the lovers now kneeling and beseeching the evil fairy to have pity on them, now rushing despairingly into each other's arms, while the witch's own dancing held all of threat and malevolence that superb artistry could infuse into it.

The tale unfolded itself with the inevitableness of preordained catastrophe.

Ritmagar declines to be appeased. She raises her claw-like hand, pointing a crooked finger at the lovers, and with a clash of brazen sound and the dull thrumming of drums the whole scene dissolves into absolute darkness. When the darkness lifts once more, the stage is empty save for a pure white swan which sails slowly down the lake and disappears. . . . Followed a solo dance by Ravinski in which he gave full vent to the anguish of the bereft lover, while now and again the swan swam statelily by him. At length the witch appeared once more and, yielding to his impassioned entreaties, declared that the Swan-Maiden might reassume her human form during the hour preceding sunset, and Magda—the Swan-Maiden released from enchantment for the time being—came running in on the stage.

This love-duet was resumed and presently, when the lovers had made their exit, Ritmagar was seen gleefully watching while the red sun dropped slowly down the sky, sinking at last below the rim of the lake.

Then a low rumble of drums muttered as she stole from the stage, the personification of vindictive triumph, and all at once the great concourse of people in the auditorium seemed to strain forward, conscious that the climax of the evening, the wonderful solo dance by the Wielitzska, was about to begin.

The moon rose on the left, and Magda, a slim white figure in her dress which cleverly suggested the plumage of a swan, floated on to the stage with that exquisite, ethereal lightness of movement which only toe-dancing—and toe-dancing of the most perfectly finished quality—seems able to convey. It was as though her feet were not touching the solid earth at all. The feather-light drifting of blown petals; the swaying grace of a swan as it glides along the surface of the water; the quivering, spirit-like flight of a butterfly—it seemed as though all these had been caught and blended together by the dancer.

The heavier instruments of the orchestra were silenced, but the rippling music of the strings wove and interwove a dreaming melody, unutterably sweet and appealing, as the Swan-Maiden, bathed in pallid moonlight, besought the invisible Ritmagar for mercy, praying that she might not die even though the sun had set. . . . But there comes no answer to her prayers. A sombre note of stern denial sounds in the music, and the Swan-Maiden yields to utter despair, drooping slowly to earth. Just as Death himself claims her, her lover, demented with anguish, comes rushing to her side, and turning towards him as she lies dying upon the ground, she yields to his embrace with a last gesture of passionate surrender.



Slowly the heavy curtains swung together, hiding the limp, lifeless body of the Swan-Maiden and the despairing figure of her lover as he knelt beside her, and after a breathless pause, the great audience, carried away by the tragic drama of the dance, its passion and its pathos, broke into a thunder of applause that rolled and reverberated through the theatre.

Again and again Magda and her partner were called before the curtain, the former laden with the sheafs of flowers which had been handed up on to the stage. But the audience refused to be satisfied until at last Magda appeared alone, standing very white and slender under the blaze of lights, a faint suggestion of fatigue in the poise of her lissome figure.

Instantly the applause broke out anew—thunderous, overwhelming. Magda smiled, then held out her arms in a little disarming gesture of appeal, touching in its absolute simplicity. It was as though she said: "Dear people, I love you all for being so pleased, but I'm very, very tired. Please, won't you let me go?"

So they let her go, with one final round of cheers and clapping, and then, as the curtains fell together once more and the orchestra slid unobtrusively into the entr'acte music, a buzz of conversation arose.

Michael Quarrington turned and spoke to Davilof as they stood together.

"This will be my last memory of England for some time to come. Mademoiselle Wielitzska is very wonderful. As much actress as dancer—and both rather superlatively."

There was an odd note in Quarrington's voice, as if he were forcibly repressing some less measured form of words.

Davilof glanced at him sharply.

"You think so?" he said curtly.

The musician's hazel eyes were burning feverishly. One hand was clenched on the back of the chair from which he had just risen; the other hung at his side, the fingers opening and shutting nervously.

Quarrington smiled.

"Don't you?"

The eyes of the two men met, and Michael became suddenly conscious that the other was struggling in the grip of some strong emotion. He could even sense its atmosphere of antagonism towards himself.

"I think"—Davilof spoke with slow intensity—"I think she's a soulless piece of devil's mechanism." And turning abruptly, he swung out of the box, slamming the door behind him.

Quarrington frowned. With his keen perceptions it was not difficult for him to divine what lay at the back of Davilof's bitter criticism. The man was in love—hopelessly in love with the Wielitzska. Probably she had turned him down, as she had turned down better men than he, but he had been unable to resist the bitter-sweet temptation of watching her dance, and throughout the evening had almost certainly been suffering the torments of the damned.

The artist smiled a little grimly to himself, remembering the many evenings he, too, had spent at the Imperial Theatre, drawn thither by the magnetism of a white, slender woman with night-black hair, whose long, dark eyes haunted him perpetually, even coming between him and his work.

And then, just as he had made up his mind to go away, first to Paris and afterwards to Spain or perhaps even further afield, and thus set as many miles of sea and land as he could betwixt himself and the "kind of woman he had no place for," fate had played him a trick and sent her out of the obscurity of the fog-ridden street straight to his very hearth and home, so that the fragrance and sweetness and charm of her must needs linger there to torment him.

He thought he could make a pretty accurate guess at the state of Davilof's feelings, and was ironically conscious of a sense of fellowship with him.

Lady Arabella's sharp voice cut across his reflections.

"I don't care for this next thing," she said, flicking at her programme. "Mrs. Grey and I are going round to see Magda. Will you come with us?"

Quarrington had every intention of politely excusing himself. Instead of which he found himself replying:

"With pleasure—if Mademoiselle Wielitzska won't think I'm intruding."

Lady Arabella chuckled.

"Well, she intruded on you that day in the fog, didn't she? So you'll be quits." She glanced impatiently round the box. "Where on earth has Davilof vanished to? Has he gone up in flame?"

Michael laughed involuntarily.

"Something of the kind, I fancy," he replied. "Anyway, he departed rather hurriedly."

"Poor Antoine!" Gillian spoke with a kind of humorous compassion. "He has a temperament. I'm glad I haven't."

"You have the best of all temperaments, Mrs. Grey," answered Michael, as they both followed Lady Arabella out of the box.

She looked at him inquiringly.

"The temperament that understands other people's temperaments," he added.

"How do you know?" she asked, smiling.

Lady Arabella was prancing on ahead down the corridor, and for the moment Michael and Gillian were alone.

"We artists learn to look for what lies below the surface. If your work is sincere, you find when you've finished a portrait that the soul of the sitter has revealed itself unmistakably."

Gillian nodded.

"I've been told you've an almost diabolical genius for expressing just what a man or woman is really like—in character, I mean—in your portraits."

"I can't help it," he said simply. "It comes—it reveals itself—if you paint sincerely."

"And do you—always paint sincerely?"

He laughed.

"I try to. Though once I got hauled over the coals pretty sharply for doing so. My sitter happened to be a pretty society woman, possessed of about as much soul as would cover a threepenny-bit, and when I'd finished her portrait she simply turned and rent me. 'I wanted a taking picture,' she informed me indignantly, 'not the bones of my personality laid bare for public inspection.'"

They were outside Magda's dressing-room by this time, and Virginie, who had flown to her nurseling the moment the dance was at an end, opened the door in response to Lady Arabella's preemptory knock. Gillian paused a moment before entering the room.

"Yours is a wonderful gift of perception," she said quietly. "It ought to make you—very merciful."

Michael looked at her swiftly. Her eyes seemed to be asking something of him—entreating. But before he could speak Lady Arabella's voice interposed remorselessly.

"Come in, you two; and for goodness' sake shut the door. There's draught enough to waft one to heaven."

There was no choice but to obey, and silently Quarrington followed Mrs. Grey into the room.



CHAPTER VI

MICHAEL CHANGES HIS MIND

Magda's dressing-room at the Imperial Theatre was something rather special in the way of dressing-rooms. It had been designed expressly for her by the management, and boasted a beautifully appointed bathroom adjoining it where she could luxuriate in a refreshing dip immediately after the strain and fatigue of her work on the stage.

She had been very firm about the bathroom, airily dismissing a plaintive murmur from the manager to the effect that they were "somewhat crowded for space at the Imperial."

"Then take another theatre, my dear man," she had told him. "Or build! Or give the corps de ballet one less dressing-room amongst them. But if you want me, I must have a bathroom. If I dance, I bathe afterwards. If not, I don't dance."

Being a star of the first magnitude, the Wielitzska could dictate her own terms, and accordingly a bathroom she had.

She had just emerged from its white-tiled, silver-tapped luxury a few minutes before Lady Arabella, together with Gillian and Michael Quarrington, presented themselves at her dressing-room door, and they found her ensconced in an easy-chair by the fire, sipping a cup of steaming hot tea.

"I've brought Mr. Quarrington to see you," announced Lady Arabella. "I thought perhaps you'd like some other congratulations besides family ones."

"Am I permitted?" asked Quarrington, taking the hand Magda held out to him. "Or are you too tired to be bothered with an outsider?"

Magda looked up at him.

"I've very glad to see you," she said quietly.

She appeared unwontedly sweet and girlish as she sat there, clad in a negligee of some soft silken stuff that clung about the lissom lines of her figure, and with her satiny hair coiled in a simple knot at the nape of her neck. There was little or nothing about her to remind one of the successful ballerina, and Michael found himself poignantly recalling the innocent, appealing charm of the Swan-Maiden. It was difficult to associate this woman with that other who had so unconsciously turned down his pal—the man who had loved her.

"Well? Did it go all right?"

Magda's eyes sought Gillian's eagerly as she put the question.

"Did it go?" Mrs. Grey's voice held all the unqualified enthusiasm any artiste could desire.

"Oh, Magda! It was wonderful! The most wonderful, beautiful dance I've ever seen."

"And you know it as well as we do," interpolated Lady Arabella tartly, but smiling pridefully in spite of herself.

"Still, of course, she likes to hear us say it." Gillian championed her friend stoutly.

"The whole world will be saying it to-morrow," observed Quarrington quietly.

Here Virginie created a diversion by handing round cups of freshly brewed tea.

"You'll get nerves—drinking tea at this hour of the night," commented Lady Arabella, accepting a cup with alacrity, nevertheless.

"I take it very weak," protested Magda, smiling faintly. "It's the only thing I like after dancing."

But Lady Arabella was already deep in conversation with Gillian and Virginie—a conversation which resolved itself chiefly into a laudatory chorus regarding the evening's performance. In the background Magda's maid moved quietly to and fro, carefully putting away her mistress's dancing dresses. For the moment Michael and Magda were to all intents and purposes alone.

"I shall not easily forget to-night," he said rather low, drawing a chair up beside her.

"You liked it, then?" she asked hesitatingly—almost shyly.

"'Like' is hardly the word."

Magda flashed him a swift glance.

"And yet," she said slowly, "I'm the 'type of woman you hate.'"

"You make it rather difficult to maintain the point of view," he admitted.

She was silent a moment.

"You were very unkind to me that day," she said at last.

Their eyes met and in hers was something soft and dangerously disarming. Quarrington got up suddenly from his chair.

"Perhaps I was unkind to you so that I might not be unkind to myself," he replied curtly.

Magda's soft laugh rippled out.

"But how selfish! And—and aren't you being rather mysterious?"

"Am I?" he returned pointedly. "Surely self-preservation is the first instinct of the human species?"

She picked up the challenge and tossed it lightly back to him.

"Is the danger, then, very great?"

"I think it is. So, like a wise man, I propose to avoid it."

"How?"

"Why, by quitting the danger zone. I go to Paris to-morrow."

"To Paris?"

Magda experienced a sudden feeling of blankness. It was inexplicable, but somehow the knowledge that Quarrington was going away seemed to take all the savour out of things. It was only by a supreme effort that she contrived to keep her tone as light and unconcerned as his own as she continued:

"And then—after Paris?"

"After Paris? Oh, Spain possibly. Or the Antipodes!"—with a short laugh.

"Who's talking about the Antipodes?" suddenly chimed in Lady Arabella. "Home to bed's my next move. Gillian, you come with me—the car can take you on to Hampstead after dropping me in Park Lane. And Virginie can drive back with Magda."

"Yes, do go with Marraine," said Magda, nodding acquiescence in reply to Gillian's glance of interrogation. "I have to dress yet."

There was a general move towards the door.

"Good-bye"—Magda's slim hand lay for a moment in Quarrington's. "I—I'm sorry you're going away, Saint Michel."

Only Michael heard the last two words, uttered in that trainante, slightly husky voice that held so much of music and appeal. He turned abruptly and made his way out of the room in the wake of Gillian and Lady Arabella.

"You'd better postpone your visit to the Antipodes, Mr. Quarrington," said the latter, as presently they all three stood together in the vestibule, halted by the stream of people pouring out from the theatre. "I'm giving a dinner-party next week, with a 'crush' to follow. Stay and come to it."

"It's awfully kind of you, Lady Arabella, but I'm afraid it's impossible."

"Fiddlesticks! You're a free agent, aren't you?"—looking at him keenly.

A whimsical light gleamed for an instant in the grey eyes.

"I sometimes wonder if I am," he returned.

"There's only one cord I know of that can't be either unknotted—or cut. And that's lack of money. That's not your complaint"—significantly.

"No."

"So you'll come?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Magda has promised to dance for me," proceeded Lady Arabella, entirely disregarding his quietly uttered negative. "They're not giving The Swan-Maiden that night at the Imperial. She can't dine, of course, poor dear. Really, dancers have a lot to put up with—or rather, to put up without! Magda never dares to enjoy a good square meal. Afraid of getting fat, of course! After all, a dancer's figure's her fortune."

Like a low, insistent undertone beneath the rattle of Lady Arabella's volubility Michael could hear again the murmur of a soft, dragging voice: "I'm sorry you're going away, Saint Michel."

It seemed almost as though Lady Arabella, with that uncanny shrewdness of hers, divined it.

"You'll come, then?" She smiled at him over her shoulder, moving forward as the crush in the vestibule lessened a little.

And Michael, with an odd expression in his eyes, answered suddenly:

"Yes, I'll come."



Later, as Lady Arabella and Gillian drove home together, the former laughed quietly. There was an element of pride and triumph in the laughter. Probably the hen who has reared a duckling and sees it sail off into the water experiences, alongside her natural apprehension and astonishment, a somewhat similar pride in the startling proclivities evinced by her nurseling.

"That nice artist-man is in love with Magda," crowed Lady Arabella contentedly.

Gillian smiled.

"Do you think so?"

"I do. Only it's very much against his will, for some reason or other. Crossing from Dover to-morrow, forsooth!"—with a broad smile. "Not he! He'll be at my party—and asking Magda to marry him before the week's out, bar accidents! . . . After all, it's not surprising that the men are falling over each other to marry her. She's really rather wonderful. Where do you think she gets it all from, Gillian, my dear? Not from the Vallincourts, I'll swear!"—chuckling.

Mrs. Grey shook her head.

"I don't know. But I think Magda is a standing argument in favour of the doctrine of reincarnation! She always seems to me to be a kind of modern embodiment of Helen of Troy or Cleopatra."

"Only without the capacity for falling in love! She's as chilly as an iceberg and yet somehow gives you the idea she's all fire and passion. No wonder the men get misled, poor lambs!"

"She's not cold, really," asserted Gillian positively. "Of that I'm sure. No one could dance as she does—and be an iceberg."

Lady Arabella chuckled again, wickedly.

"A woman who can dance like that ought to be preceded through life by a red flag. She positively stirs my old blood—that's been at a comfortably tepid temperature for the last thirty years!"

"Some day," said Gillian, "she'll fall in love. And then—"

"Then there'll be fireworks."

Lady Arabella completed the sentence briskly just as the car pulled up in front of her house. She skipped nimbly out on to the pavement.

"Fireworks, my dear," she repeated emphatically. "And a very fine display, too! Good-night."

The car slid away north with Gillian inside it reflecting rather ruefully upon the very great amount of probability contained in Lady Arabella's parting comment.



CHAPTER VII

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Lady Arabella's big rooms were filling rapidly. The dinner to which only a few of the elect had been bidden was over, and now those who had been invited to the less exclusive reception which was to follow were eagerly wending their way towards Park Lane.

The programme for the evening promised to be an attractive one. A solo from Antoine Davilof, Lady Arabella's pet lion-cub of the moment; a song from the leading operatic tenor; and afterwards a single dance by the Wielitzska—who could never be persuaded to perform at any other private houses than those of her godmother and the Duchess of Lichbrooke—the former's half sister. So, in this respect, Lady Arabella enjoyed almost a monopoly, and such occasions as the present were enthusiastically sought after by her friends and acquaintances. Later, when the artistes had concluded their programme, there was to be a dance. The ballroom, the further end of which boasted a fair-sized stage, had been temporarily arranged with chairs to accommodate an audience, and in one of the anterooms Virginie, with loving, skilful fingers, was putting the finishing touches to Magda's toilette.

Magda submitted passively to her ministrations. She was thinking of Michael Quarrington, the man who had come into her life by such strange chance and who had so deliberately gone out of it again. By the very manner of his going he had succeeded in impressing himself on her mind as no other man had ever done. Other men did not shun her like the plague, she reflected bitterly!

But from the very beginning he had shown her that he disapproved of her fundamentally. She was the "type of woman he hated!" Night and day that curt little phrase had bitten into her thoughts, stinging her with its quiet contempt.

She felt irritated that she should care anything about his opinion. But if she were candid with herself she had to admit that she did care, intensely. More than that, his departure from England had left her conscious of an insistent and unaccountable little ache. The knowledge that there could be no more chance meetings, that he had gone right out of her ken, seemed like the sudden closing of a door which had just been opening to her. It had somehow taken the zest out of things.

"Voila!" Virginie drew back to survey the results of her labours, turning for approval to Gillian, who was in attendance in her capacity of accompanist. "Is it not that mademoiselle looks ravishing?"

"Quite ravishing, Virginie," agreed Gillian. "Did you expect her to look anything else by the time you had finished decking her out?" she added teasingly.

"It is nothing that I do," responded the old Frenchwoman seriously. "Mademoiselle cannot help but be beautiful to the eye—le bon dieu has created her like that."

"I believe He has," assented Gillian, smiling.

As she spoke the bell of the telephone instrument on the table beside her rang imperatively and she lifted the receiver. Magda, watching her face as she took the message, saw it suddenly blanch.

"Coppertop! . . . He's ill!" she gasped.

"Ill?" Magda could hardly credit it. Two hours ago they had left the child in perfect health.

"Yes." Gillian swallowed, moistening her dry lips. "They've sent for the doctor. It's croup. Oh!"—despairingly, and letting the receiver fall unheeded from her grasp—"What am I to do? What am I to do?"

Magda stepped forward, the filmy draperies of the dress in which she was to dance floating cloudily about her as she moved. She picked up the receiver as it hung dangling aimlessly from the stand and replaced it on its clip.

"Do?" she said quietly. "Why, you'll go straight home, of course. As quickly as the car can take you. Virginie"—turning to the maid—"fly and order the car round at once."

Gillian looked at her distractedly.

"But you? Who'll play for you? I can't go! I can't leave you!" Her voice was shaken by sobs. "Oh, Coppertop!"

Magda slipped a comforting arm round her shoulder.

"Of course you'll go—and at once, too. See, here's your coat"—lifting it up from the back of the chair where Gillian had thrown it. "Put it on."

Hardly conscious of what was happening, Gillian allowed herself to be helped into the coat. Suddenly recollection returned.

"But your dance—your dance, Magda? You've forgotten!"

Magda shook her head.

"No. It will be all right," she said soothingly. "Don't worry, Gillyflower. You've forgotten that Davilof is playing here to-night."

"Antoine?" Gillian stared at her incredulously. "But you can't ask him to play for you! You'd hate asking him a favour after—after his refusal to accompany you any more."

Magda smiled at her reassuringly.

"My dear," she said, and there was an unaffected kindliness in her voice which few people ever heard. "My dear, I'm not going to let a little bit of cheap pride keep you away from Coppertop."

She bent suddenly and kissed Gillian's white, miserable face just as Virginie reappeared in the doorway to announce that the car was waiting.

"There, run along. Look, would you like to take Virginie with you?"

"No, no." Gillian shook her head decidedly. "I shall be quite all right. Oh, Magda!"—impulsively drawing the slender figure close into her arms a moment. "You are good!"

Magda laughed a trifle bitterly.

"That would be news to the world at large!" she replied. Then cheerfully: "Now, don't worry, Gillyflower. Remember they've got a doctor there. And 'phone me presently about Coppertop. If he's worse, I'll come home as early as I can get away. Send the car straight back here."

As soon as Gillian had gone, Magda flung a loose wrap over her diaphanous draperies and turned to Virginie.

"Where is Monsieur Davilof? Do you know?"

"Mais oui, mademoiselle! I saw him through the doorway as I came from ordering the car. He is in the library."

"Alone?"

"Oui, mademoiselle!" Virginie nodded eloquently. "He smokes a cigarette—to steady the nerves, I suppose."

Magda went swiftly out of the room. She reached the hall by way of an unfrequented passage and slipped into the library closing the door behind her.

"Antoine!"

At the sound of her voice Davilof, who had been standing by the fire, wheeled round.

"You!" he exclaimed violently. "You!" And then remained silent, staring at her.

"You knew I was dancing here to-night," she said chidingly. "Why are you so startled? We were bound to meet, weren't we?"

"No, we were not. I proposed leaving the house the moment my solo was over."

Magda laughed a little.

"So afraid of me, Antoine?" she mocked gently.

He made no answer, but his hands, hanging at his sides, clenched suddenly.

Magda advanced a few steps towards him and paused.

"Davilof," she said quietly. "Will you play for me to-night?"

He looked at her, puzzled.

"Play for you?" he repeated. "But you have Mrs. Grey."

"No. She can't accompany me this evening."

"And you ask me?" His voice held blank amazement.

"Yes. Will you do it?"

"Do you remember what I told you the last time we met? That I would never play for you again?"

Magda drew her breath slowly. It was hurting her pride far more than Gillian knew or could imagine to ask a favour of this man. And he wasn't going to make it easy for her, either—that was evident. But she must ask it, nevertheless. For Gillian's sake; for the sake of poor little Coppertop fighting for breath and with no "mummie" at hand to help and comfort him; and for the sake of Lady Arabella, too. After promising to dance for her she couldn't let her godmother down by crying off at the last moment, when all the world and his wife had come crowding to her house on the strength of that promise.

So she bent her head in response to Davilof's contemptuous question.

"Yes, I remember," she said quietly.

"And you still ask me to play for you?"

"I still ask you."

Davilof laughed.

"You amaze me! And supposing I reply by saying I refuse?"

"But you won't," dared Magda.

Davilof's eyes held something of cruelty in their hazel depths as he answered quietly:

"On the contrary—I do refuse."

Her hand went up to her throat. It was going to be more difficult than she had anticipated!

"There is no one else who can play for me as you do," she suggested.

"No," fiercely. "Because no one loves you as I do."

"What is the use of saying you love me when you won't do the one little thing I ask?" she retorted. "It is not often that I ask favours. And—and no one has ever refused me a request before."

Davilof could hear the note of proud resentment in her voice, and he realised to the full that, in view of all that had passed between them in the Mirror Room, it must have been a difficult matter for a woman of Magda's temperament to bring herself to ask his help.

But he had no intention of sparing her. None but himself knew how bitterly she had hurt him, how cruelly she had stung his pride, when she had flung him that contemptuous command: "I shall want you to-morrow, Davilof!—same time." He had unveiled his very soul before her—and in return she had tossed him an order as though he were a lackey who had taken a liberty. All his pain and brooding resentment came boiling up to the surface.

"If I meant anything to you," he said slowly, "if you had even looked upon me as a friend, you could have asked what you liked of me. But you showed me once—very clearly—that in your eyes I was nothing more than your paid accompanist. Very well, then! Pay me—and I'll play for you to-night."

"Pay you?"

"Oh, not in money"—with a short laugh.

"Then—then what do you mean?" Her face had whitened a little.

"It's quite simple. Later on there is a dance. Give me a dance with you!"

Magda hesitated. In other circumstances she would have refused point-blank. Davilof had offended her—and more than that, the revelation of the upsettingly vehement order of his passion for her that day in the Mirror Room had frightened her not a little. There was something stormy and elemental about it. To the caloric Pole, love was love, and the fulfilment of his passion for the adored woman the supreme necessity of life.

Realising that she had to withstand an ardour essentially unEnglish in its violently inflammable quality, Magda was loth to add fuel to the flame. And if she promised to dance with Davilof she must let him hold her in his arms, risk that dangerous proximity which, she knew now, would set the man's wild pulses racing unsteadily and probably serve as the preliminary to another tempestuous scene.

"Well?" Davilof broke in upon her self-communings. "Have I asked too high a price?"

Time was flying. She must decide, and decide quickly. She took her courage in both hands.

"No," she returned quickly. "I will dance with you, Antoine."

He bowed.

"Our bargain is complete, then," he said ironically. "I shall be charmed to play for you, mademoiselle."



An hour or so later the last burst of applause had died away, and the well-dressed crowd which had sat in enthralled silence while the Wielitzska danced emerged chattering and laughing from the great ballroom.

Their place was immediately taken by deft, felt-slippered men, who proceeded swiftly to clear away the seats and the drugget which had been laid to protect the surface of the dancing floor. In the twinkling of an eye, as it were, they transformed what had been to all intents and purposes a concert-hall into a flower-decked ballroom, while the members of the band engaged for the dance began climbing agilely into their allotted places on the raised platform preparatory to tuning up for the evening's work.

Magda, released at last from Virginie's worshipfully careful hands, came slowly down the main staircase. She was in black, diaphanous and elusive, from which her flower-pale face and shoulders emerged like a water-lily starring the dark pool on which it floats. A crimson rose glowed just above her heart—that and her softly scarlet lips the only touches of colour against the rare black-and-white loveliness of her.

She was descending the stairs reluctantly, mentally occupied in screwing up courage to fulfil her promise to Davilof. A 'phone message from Friars' Holm had come through saying that Coppertop was better. All danger was passed and there was no longer any need for her to return early. So it remained, now, for her to keep her pact with the musician.

As she rounded the last bend in the staircase, she saw that a man was standing with bent head at the foot of the stairs, apparently waiting for someone, and she threw a quick, nervous glance in the direction of the motionless figure, thinking it might be Davilof himself. It would be like his eager impatience to await her coming there. Then, as the lights gleamed on fair, crisply waving hair she realised that the man was Michael—Michael, whom she believed to be on his way to Spain!

Perhaps it was merely chance, or perhaps it was at the direct inspiration of Lady Arabella, but, whatever may have been the cause, Gillian had not confided to Magda that Quarrington was to be at her godmother's reception. The sudden, totally unexpected meeting with him—with this man who had contrived to dominate her thoughts so inexplicably—startled a little cry of surprise from her lips. She drew back abruptly, and then—quite how it happened she could not tell—but she missed her footing and fell.

For the fraction of a second she experienced a horrible sensation of utter helplessness to save herself; then Michael's arms closed round her as he caught her before she reached the ground.

The shock of the fall stupefied her for a moment. She lay against his breast like a terrified child, clinging to him convulsively.

"It's all right," he murmured soothingly. "You're quite safe."

Unconsciously his arms tightened round her. His breath quickened. The satin-soft hair had brushed his cheek as she fell; the pale, exquisite face and warm white throat lay close beneath his lips—all the fragrant beauty of her gathered unresisting against his heart. He had only to stoop his head——

With a stifled exclamation he jerked himself backward, squaring his shoulders, and released her, though he still steadied her with a hand beneath her arm.

"There, you are all right," he said reassuringly. "No bones broken."

The commonplace words helped to restore her poise.

"Oh! Thank you!" The words came a little gaspingly still. "I—I don't know how I came to fall like that. I think you startled me—I didn't expect to see you here."

"I didn't expect to be," he returned, smiling a little.

Magda did not ask how it had come to pass. For the moment it was enough for her that he was there—that he had not gone away! She was conscious of a sudden incomprehensible sense of tumult within her.

"It was lucky for me you happened to be standing just at the foot of the stairs," she said a little unsteadily.

"I didn't 'happen.' I was there of malice prepense"—the familiar crooked smile flashed out—"waiting for you."

"Waiting for me?"

"Yes. Lady Arabella asked me to shepherd you into the supper-room and see that you had a glass of champagne and a sandwich before the dancing begins."

"Orders from headquarters?"—smiling up at him.

"Exactly."

He held out his arm and they moved away together. As they passed through the crowded rooms one man murmured ironically to another:

"Quarrington's got it badly, I should say."

The second man glanced after the pair with amused eyes.

"So he's the latest victim, is he? I head young Raynham's nose was out of joint."

"You don't mean she's fired him?"

The other nodded.

"Got the push the day before yesterday," he answered tersely.

"Poor devil! He'll take it hard. He's a hotheaded youngster. Just the sort to go off and blow his brains out."

Meanwhile Quarrington had established Magda at a corner table in the empty supper-room and was seeing to it that Lady Arabella's commands were obeyed, in spite of Magda's assurances that she was not in the least hungry.

"Then you ought to be," he replied. "After dancing. Besides, unlike the rest of us, you had no dinner."

"Oh, I had a light meal at six o'clock. But naturally, you can't consume a solid dinner just before giving a performance."

"I'm not going to pay you compliments about your dancing," he observed quietly, after a pause. "You must receive a surfeit of them. But"—looking at her with those direct grey eyes of his—"I'm glad I didn't leave England when I intended to."

"Why didn't you?" she asked impulsively.

He laughed.

"Because it's so much easier to yield to temptation than to resist," he answered, not taking his eyes from her face.

She flushed a little.

"What was the temptation?" she asked uncertainly.

He waited an instant, then answered with deliberation:

"The temptation of seeing you again."

"I should have thought you disapproved of me far too much for that to be the case! Saint Michel, don't you think you're rather hard on me?"