brief description:
"A tall, dark woman, dressed in yellow. She was on that bench a few
minutes ago. Anyone will tell you..."

Rupert crossed the lawn in the direction indicated; he was in the mood
of resigned boredom which possesses most men at a garden-party, and for
the moment the Dream Woman had no place in his thoughts. Lady Belcher
was plainly a guest of importance, for whose refreshment the hostess
felt herself responsible. She was probably elderly, and, as such,
uninteresting from a young man's standpoint. He looked for the gleam of
a yellow dress, caught it defined sharply among the surrounding blues
and pinks, and drew up in front of the seat.

"Lady Belcher, I think? Mrs Melhuish has sent me to ask you if you
will have some tea?"

Lady Belcher was talking volubly to an acquaintance on the subject of
the shortcomings of her friends, and was much bored by the interruption.
She lifted a face like an elderly rocking-horse, and made short work of
the invitation.

"Thanks! Couldn't possibly. I abhor tea," she said curtly, and
immediately resumed the interrupted conversation.

Dempster turned, faintly smiling. He was accustomed to the rudeness of
the modern society woman, and it had no power to hurt him. On the
contrary, he congratulated himself on having escaped an unwelcome task.
He turned aside with a sigh of relief, and even as he turned, the
ordered beating of his heart seemed for a moment to cease, and leave his
being suspended in space. Cut sharply in twain, as by the sweep of a
scythe, the old life fell from him and the new life began, for there,
but a couple of yards away, stood the Dream Woman, her eyes gazing
steadily into his!

She was a tall, slim woman, no longer in her first youth, but her face
had a strange, arresting beauty. Hair and eyes were dark, and there was
something curiously un-English in the modelling of the features,
something subtly suggestive of a fiercer, more primal race. So might a
woman have looked whose far-off ancestor had been an Indian brave,
bequeathing to future generations some spark of his own wild vigour.
The lips were scarlet, a thin, curved line in the pallor of her face;
her eyes were fringed with black, straight lashes. She wore a gown of
cloudy black, and there came to Rupert, with a cramping of the heart,
the swift conviction that she was unhappy.

She was looking at him, half frowning, half smiling, having, it would
appear, overheard his invitati