ll, truth is truth; and a good
deal depends on the quality of--the mere woman."

She vouchsafed him the stateliest shadow of a curtsey.

"I believe I shall end in converting you, after all! Number twelve.
Don't forget."

And turning from him she saw that her husband stood a few paces off,
watching them with a thoughtful scrutiny that caught at her heart.
Gliding across the polished floor, she slipped a hand under his elbow,
and leaned close to him.

"Darling," she whispered, "I am so glad this is ours." Without a word,
he put his arm round her, and swept her into the crowd.

For a while Lenox followed them with his eyes, as they circled smoothly
in and out among the dancers, as notable a couple as the room
contained. Then he raked the shifting crowd for Quita's grey-green
figure,--in vain. Neither she nor Garth was to be seen. It needed
small perspicacity to locate them: and grinding his teeth Lenox went
out again into a night jewelled with the unnumbered bonfires of the
universe. Striking a match, he lit his pipe, in defiance of the
knowledge that for the past few weeks he had been persistently
overstepping his self-imposed allowance, and fell to pacing the railed
path outside the building.

Was it altogether his own fault, he wondered bitterly, that he stood
thus, cut off from the core of life, breaking his teeth upon the husks
of it, and making believe that they satisfied his hunger? In the
tragedies resulting from 'the ill-judged execution of the well-judged
plan of things,' that question flung, again and again into the
'derisive silence of eternity,' mocks the soul with echo's answer.
Where lies the blame? Where, indeed? For all his vaunted supremacy
man is not always master of his fate. Circumstance, heredity, the
despicable trifle, the inexpert finger, which a certain type of human
is so zealous to thrust into an alien life, compass him about with a
cloud of witnesses to his own impotence.

With which conclusion, softened by the kindly influence of drugged
tobacco, Lenox knocked the ashes out of his pipe; and decided that
since he was here to observe his wife and Garth, and to cure himself of
an undignified infatuation, it would be well to return to the ballroom
till number twelve.

But as he moved forward a low laugh, near at hand, chained him to the
spot. Then Quita emerged from a patch of shadow, closely followed by
Garth. She tilted her chin, and flung a smiling threat at him over her
s