rself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect figure, a change of
the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed by a person born in the
purple. Even if she did offer you her hand--as she did to me--it was as
if across a broad river. Trick of manner or a bit of truth peeping out?
Perhaps she's really one of those inaccessible beings. What do you
think, Blunt?"

It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range of
sensitiveness had been increased already) displeased or rather disturbed
me strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But after a while he
turned to me.

"That thick man," he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, "is as fine as a
needle. All these statements about the seduction and then this final
doubt expressed after only two visits which could not have included more
than six hours altogether and this some three years ago! But it is Henry
Allegre that you should ask this question, Mr. Mills."

"I haven't the secret of raising the dead," answered Mills good
humouredly. "And if I had I would hesitate. It would seem such a
liberty to take with a person one had known so slightly in life."

"And yet Henry Allegre is the only person to ask about her, after all
this uninterrupted companionship of years, ever since he discovered her;
all the time, every breathing moment of it, till, literally, his very
last breath. I don't mean to say she nursed him. He had his
confidential man for that. He couldn't bear women about his person. But
then apparently he couldn't bear this one out of his sight. She's the
only woman who ever sat to him, for he would never suffer a model inside
his house. That's why the 'Girl in the Hat' and the 'Byzantine Empress'
have that family air, though neither of them is really a likeness of Dona
Rita. . . You know my mother?"

Mills inclined his body slightly and a fugitive smile vanished from his
lips. Blunt's eyes were fastened on the very centre of his empty plate.

"Then perhaps you know my mother's artistic and literary associations,"
Blunt went on in a subtly changed tone. "My mother has been writing
verse since she was a girl of fifteen. She's still writing verse. She's
still fifteen--a spoiled girl of genius. So she requested one of her
poet friends--no less than Versoy himself--to arrange for a visit to
Henry Allegre's house. At first he thought he hadn't heard aright. You
must know that for my mother a man that doesn't jump out of his skin fo