une. These moments whilst he waited for her were a
joy to him. The atmosphere was fragrant with the perfume of her favourite
roses, a book lay upon the little inlaid table face downwards as she had
left it. There was a delicately engraved etching upon the wall, which he
recognized as her work; the watercolours, all of a French school which he
had often praised, were of her choosing. Perfect though the room was in
colouring and detail, there was yet a habitable, almost a homely, air
about it. Mannering moved about amidst her treasures like a man in a
dream, only it was a dream of loneliness gone forever, of a grey life
suddenly coloured and transformed. It was wonderful.

Then the soft swish of a skirt, and she came in. She had changed her
gown. She wore white lace, with a string of pearls about her neck. He
looked eagerly into her face, and a great relief took the place of that
single instant of haunting fear. The change was still there. It was not
the great lady who swept in, but the woman who has found an answer to
the one question of life, a little tremulous still, a little less
self-assured. She looked at him almost appealingly. A delicate tinge of
colour lingered in her cheeks. He moved quickly forward to meet her.

"Dear!" she murmured.

He raised her hand to his lips. He was satisfied.

"You see what my new-born vanity has led to," she declared, smilingly. "I
have had to keep you waiting whilst I changed my gown. I hope you like me
in white."

"You are adorable," he declared.

She laughed.

"I wonder," she said, "would you mind dining here alone with me? It will
be quite a scratch meal, but I thought that it would be cosier than a
restaurant, and afterwards--we could come in here and talk."

"I should like it better than anything in the world," he declared,
truthfully.

"You may take me in, then," she said. "I hope that you are as hungry as
I am. No, not that way. I have ordered dinner to be served in the little
room where I dine when I am alone."

To Mannering there seemed something almost unreal about the chaste
perfection of the meal and its wonderful service. They dined at a small
round table, so small that more than once their fingers touched upon the
tablecloth. A single servant waited upon them, swiftly and perfectly. The
butler appeared only with the wine, which he served, and quietly
withdrew. Across the tangled mass of flowers, only a few feet away all
the time, sat the woman who had suddenl