in society.

They were opposite types, for while Mary was a glowing incarnation of
color, rich as a golden morning in blossom-time, Loraine, with heavy
masses of softly spun jet coiled above her brow, looking out from eyes
that were pools of liquid darkness, might have been the queen of night.
But her mouth was a carmine blossom. This evening she wore a gown almost
barbaric in its richness of color and pattern, and when she walked ahead
of Paul Burton where the path narrowed, it seemed to him that some slim
and lithe Cleopatra was preceding him. The waltz music came across the
short distance, and Loraine Haswell went with a step that captured the
rhythm of the measure. When they had come to a corner of the garden
where a fountain tinkled in shadow and only a lacey strand or two of
moonlight fell on the grass, she halted with her outstretched arms
resting lightly on the tall basin, and let her fingers dip into the
clear water while she turned to smile on him.

"Do you know, Mrs. Haswell," Paul spoke low and with a musical thrill in
his voice, "you are the loveliest creature in captivity tonight? Your
loveliness is to a man's imagination what Wilde said white hyacinths are
to the soul--worth going without bread for."

She laughed, but into her mirth there crept, or was injected as the case
may be, a note of wistfulness.

"In captivity," she repeated, slowly. "I am always in captivity."

With most men Paul was diffident and prone to silence, but something in
his effete nature gave him confidence with women. He had been flattered
into a sort of assurance that they found him irresistible. They thought
him clairvoyantly sympathetic--and he was by the very over-refinement of
his music and dream-fed temperament.

"The other evening when I left you, I went home and closed my eyes and
sat alone--thinking of you," he told her. "To me all that is fine
beyond words I try to translate into music. Where words--even
poetry--fail, notes begin. So at the piano I tried to express something
like a portrayal of you--to myself."

She seated herself on a stone bench while he stood looking down at her.
Her head was for a moment bent and something in the droop of her
shoulders intimated unhappiness.

"Does my improvising music about you offend?" He put the question very
gently. "You know that I go to the piano as another man might go to his
prayers."

She looked up and shook her head. Then she said softly. "Offend me? No,
it makes me