it's artificial the whole of it. Your subject, as you call it, is in the
air. We're realists nowadays, you know."

Brun's flat stared at them with its hideous red brick and ugly
shapelessness. No romance for Dent Street; the glittering expanse of
Portland Place was gone.

"You can't be a realist only, if you're to do the Duchess properly,"
said Brun. "There's more than that wanted."

CHAPTER II

RACHEL

"My dear thing, it all comes back, as everything always does,
simply to personal pluck. It's only a question, no matter when
or where, of having enough."--HENRY JAMES.

I

No. 104 Portland Place was the house where the Duchess of Wrexe had
lived now for sixty years. On the left as you go towards the park it had
an air that no other house in the Place had ever been able to catch.
There were certain buildings, Nos. 31, 26, 42, for instance, that were
obviously doing their little best to present a successful imitation, but
they were left a long, a very long way behind. The interesting thing
would be to know whether No. 104 had had that wonderful "note" sixty
years ago, when the Duchess came to it. Probably not; it was, beyond
question, her presence that had thus given it its distinction. Its grim
facade, without her, would not so strangely have hinted at beauties and
wonders and glories within, nor would the windows have gleamed so
finely, nor the great hall-door have symbolized such rich dark depths.

Here the temple of the Beaminsters, here, therefore, the shrine of all
that is best and finest in English aristocracy. It was indeed the
largest house in Portland Place, and most of the houses there were
large, but, across that blank austere front more was written than mere
size. It was Age at its most scornful, but observant Age, an Age that
could compare one period with another, an Age that had not forgotten the
things that belonged to its Youth.

There was very little, up and down Portland Place, at morning, at
midday, at night, that the house did not perceive. Those high, broad,
shining windows were not as other windows--there was assertion in their
very bland stupidity.

Within the house was dark and cold, with high square rooms, wide stone
staircase, and a curious capacity for clutching any boisterous or seedy
humanity on the very threshold and strangling it.

From the hall the great stone staircase was the feature. It struck a
chill, at once, into the heart of the visitor so vast wa