in the soft tones of her voice as she said,--

"Well, Victor, are you glad I have come?"

And it was with my heart suddenly beating hard, and my face pale, and a
mist before my eyes, that I came forward to her. What had been the
first slight shock to her sleeping woman's passions I had no idea.

Perhaps some chance glance from a man's eyes upon her as she passed him
in a crowd had suddenly struck through the ice of her abstraction.
Perhaps some pressure of an arm meaning she did not even comprehend.
Perhaps some word, overheard between two men, whose meaning she did not
even comprehend. Perhaps it was only Nature unaided that had whispered
to her,--"Life is passing, and its greatest pleasure is as yet untried.
Get up and seek it."

Perhaps any of these, or all or none. I could not say. The change was
there. Lucia was conscious, awake. Pure, delicate, as from her integral
nature she would always, but still awake. As she stood, the sun fell
upon her light hair and seemed to get tangled there, a hot, rose glow
was in her face, and the smooth scarlet lips parted in a faint seducing
smile.

"Now, tell me everything," she said, softly, "I am sure the manuscript
is finished by now."

She pointed to a wicker chair for me, and drew one just opposite it in
which she threw herself, full in the morning light, but just avoiding
the stabbing sun-rays. I saw in a sort of mechanical manner the way in
which she was dressed. It was as a woman only dresses once or twice,
perhaps, in her lifetime; and that is when she is determined to win,
through the sheer strength and force of her beauty, in the face of
every obstacle, the man she desires.

Every detail had been thought of, every beauty of her form studied and
enhanced, from the light curls on her forehead, and the curves of her
bosom rising and falling under its lace bodice, to the tiny shoes that
came from beneath the folds of her delicate-coloured skirt.

It was presumably of cotton, for Lucia herself had informed me that she
never wore anything in the mornings except cotton or serge; if so, it
was a glorified cotton of a clear rose tint. Film upon film of lace
hung over it in transparent folds, through which the glowing colour
deepened and blushed at her slightest movement, as the hot colour in
the heart of a rose flushes through all its leaves.

Above her supple hips, clasping her waist, shone an open-work band of
Maltese silver, and above this rose delicate vase-like lin