talking--Flowers, lights, women not so
beautiful that they disheartened one, and, from the open windows, a
whir, a rattle, a shout, a cry, a bell, a hurdy-gurdy, a laugh--Oh! the
world was turning to-night!

There was a beautiful dinner, but she was far too happy to eat much. He
seemed to understand. They both talked a little, but it was, it
appeared, implied between them that their real conversation should be
postponed.

She was, to herself, an utterly new Lizzie Rand to-night, inarticulate,
uncertain, confused.

"What's this the papers say about South Africa?"

"Yes, it looks as though there were going to be trouble there. But you
can trust Milner--a strong man----"

"Yes, I suppose so--but it seems a pity that this Conference that they
hoped so much from has all fallen through, doesn't it? They do seem
obstinate people."

"Well, they are. I was out in Pretoria in '95--obstinate as mules. But
there won't be much trouble--a troop or two of our fellows have only got
to show their faces----"

"Yes, of course. Isn't that a pretty woman down there? There to the
right--with the black hair and the diamonds--tall--"

But tall women with black hair and Boers in South Africa were merely
points to catch hold, and, for an instant, the thrill of the contact and
the anticipation and the glorious vision of the wonderful future.

Him all this time she closely observed. He was not entirely at his ease,
when she had been in public with him before she had noticed it, his
glance at every new-comer, his conscious summoning of control lest it
should be someone whom he had once known, someone who might now,
perhaps, not know him.

It made him in her eyes all the younger, all the more happily demanding
her protection; how terribly she loved him she had never, she thought,
realized until this moment.

The Haymarket Theatre, where _Mrs. Lemiter's Decision_ had been given to
a grateful world for nearly two hundred nights, was next door.

In a moment they were there and the band was playing and the lights were
up, and then the band was not playing and the lights were down, and she
was instantly conscious of the places where his body touched hers and of
his hand lying white upon his knee.

She, Lizzie Rand, most perfect of private secretaries, most sedate and
composed of women, found it all that her self-control could secure that
she should not then and there have touched that hand with her own.

It was not really a good play. T