d and worn by the unwonted
usage to which they had been subjected. Her hair, so long, hidden from
the light and air by the veil she had worn, was flaccid and lustreless.
Only her eyes remained unchangedly beautiful. Splendid and miserable,
they stared back at the reflection which the mirror yielded.

It was a long time before Magda reappeared downstairs, so long, indeed,
that Gillian was beginning to grow nervously uneasy. When at last she
came, she was curiously quiet and responded to all Gillian's attempts
at conversation with a dull, flat indifference that was strangely at
variance with the spontaneously happy excitement which had attended the
first few moments after her arrival.

Gillian was acutely conscious of the difference in her manner, but even
she, with all her intuition, failed to attribute it to its rightful
cause. To her, Magda was so indubitably, essentially the Magda she loved
that she was hardly sensible of that shadowing of her radiant beauty
which had revealed itself with a merciless clarity to the dancer
herself. And such change as she observed she ascribed to recent illness.

Meanwhile Magda got through that first evening at Friars' Holm as best
she might. The hours seemed interminable. She was aching for night to
come, so that she might be alone with her thoughts--alone to realise and
face this new thing which had befallen her.

She had lost her beauty! The one precious gift she had to give Michael,
that lover of all beauty! . . . The knowledge seemed to beat against her
brain, throbbing and pulsing like a wound, while she made a pretence
at doing justice to the little dinner party, which had been especially
concocted for her under Virginie's watchful eye, and responded in some
sort to Coppertop's periodic outbreaks of jubilation over her return.

But the moment of release came at length. A final good-night kiss
to Gillian on the landing outside her bedroom door, and then a
nerve-racking hour while Virginie fussed over her, undressing her and
preparing her for bed with the same tender care she had devoted to the
_bebe_ she had nursed and tended more than twenty years ago.

It was over at last.

"Sleep well!" And Virginie switched off the electric light as she
pattered out of the room, leaving Magda alone in the cool dark, with the
silken softness of crepe de chine once more caressing her slender limbs,
and the fineness of lavender-scented linen smooth against her cheek.

The ease, and c