smiled, then held out her arms in a little disarming gesture of appeal,
touching in its absolute simplicity. It was as though she said: "Dear
people, I love you all for being so pleased, but I'm very, very tired.
Please, won't you let me go?"

So they let her go, with one final round of cheers and clapping, and
then, as the curtains fell together once more and the orchestra slid
unobtrusively into the _entr'acte_ music, a buzz of conversation arose.

Michael Quarrington turned and spoke to Davilof as they stood together.

"This will be my last memory of England for some time to come.
Mademoiselle Wielitzska is very wonderful. As much actress as
dancer--and both rather superlatively."

There was an odd note in Quarrington's voice, as if he were forcibly
repressing some less measured form of words.

Davilof glanced at him sharply.

"You think so?" he said curtly.

The musician's hazel eyes were burning feverishly. One hand was clenched
on the back of the chair from which he had just risen; the other hung at
his side, the fingers opening and shutting nervously.

Quarrington smiled.

"Don't you?"

The eyes of the two men met, and Michael became suddenly conscious that
the other was struggling in the grip of some strong emotion. He could
even sense its atmosphere of antagonism towards himself.

"I think"--Davilof spoke with slow intensity--"I think she's a soulless
piece of devil's mechanism." And turning abruptly, he swung out of the
box, slamming the door behind him.

Quarrington frowned. With his keen perceptions it was not difficult for
him to divine what lay at the back of Davilof's bitter criticism. The
man was in love--hopelessly in love with the Wielitzska. Probably she
had turned him down, as she had turned down better men than he, but he
had been unable to resist the bitter-sweet temptation of watching her
dance, and throughout the evening had almost certainly been suffering
the torments of the damned.

The artist smiled a little grimly to himself, remembering the many
evenings he, too, had spent at the Imperial Theatre, drawn thither by
the magnetism of a white, slender woman with night-black hair, whose
long, dark eyes haunted him perpetually, even coming between him and his
work.

And then, just as he had made up his mind to go away, first to Paris and
afterwards to Spain or perhaps even further afield, and thus set as many
miles of sea and land as he could betwixt himself and the "kind of woma