comes it that I find you here to laugh at my
_deshabille_?"

He was silent for a moment, while she looked at him questioningly.
Her soft, delicate voice, with its very slight but piquant foreign
intonation, had often sounded in his reluctant yet charmed ears since
their last meeting; but now that he heard it again he felt how weak
were his imaginings, and what sweet music it indeed was.

"I am sorry," he answered; and the constraint which he was placing
upon his voice made it sound hard and cold. "The porter rang for your
maid twice whilst I waited in the hall; but as she did not come, I
thought I had better try and find the way myself."

"And I mistook your knock for Celeste's, and let you discover me
_comme cela_. Well, you were not to blame. See, I will just arrange my
hair here, and you need not look at me unless you like."

She stood up in front of a mirror, over which she lighted a shaded
candle, and for a moment or two her white hands flashed deftly in and
out amongst the dark, silky coils of disordered hair. Paul sat down,
and taking up a magazine which he found lying on the divan, tried to
concentrate his thoughts upon its contents. But he could not. Every
moment he found his eyes and his thoughts straying to that slim, lithe
figure, watching the play of her arms and the grace of her backward
pose. When she looked suddenly round, on the completion of her task,
their eyes met.

"Monsieur Paul, you are like all your sex--curious," she said lightly.
"Tell me, then, do you admire my coiffure?"

"Very much," he answered, glancing at the loose Grecian knot into
which she had gathered her disordered hair, and confined it with a
band of dull gold. "It is quite oriental, and it seems to suit you.
Not that I am any judge of such matters," he added quickly.

She moved away with a little, low laugh, and lit two or three more of
the shaded candles or fairy lamps which were placed here and there on
brackets round the room. Then she rang the bell, and gave some orders
to the maid.

"So you think my hair looks oriental," she said, sinking down upon a
huge cushion in front of the fire. "That is what the papers call me
sometimes--oriental. My early associations asserting themselves, you
see. I think I remember more of Constantinople than any place," she
went on dreamily, with her eyes fixed on the fire. "I was only a child
in those days, but it seemed to me then that nothing could be more
beautiful than the City of Mos