st visit, the
sun had dazzled his eyes; there had been flowers in the drawing-room
and she had come to meet him in some charming dress; he had stood
enraptured at the foot of the stairs, deeming it Paradise. Now the
lamp in the hall flared with the wind from the door, and he was acutely
conscious of a large rent in the dirty, faded carpet. The house was
perfectly still--it might have been a place of ghosts, with the moon
shining mistily through the window on the stairs and the strange,
insistent murmur of the sea beating mysteriously through the closed
doors!

There was no one in the drawing-room, and its appalling bad taste
struck him as it had never done before. How could he have been blind
to it? The glaring yellow carpet, the bright purple lamp-shades, the
gilt looking-glass over the fireplace, and, above all, dusty, drooping
paper flowers in bright china vases ranged in a row by the window. Of
course, it might be merely the lodgings. Lodgings always were like
that--but to live with them for months! To attempt no change, to leave
the flowers, and the terrible oil-painting "Lost in the Snow"--an
obvious British Public appeal to a pathos that simply shrieked at you,
with its hideous colours and very material snow-storm. No, Robin could
only repeat once more, What an escape!

But had he, after all, escaped? He was not quite sure, as he stood by
the window waiting. It might be difficult, and he was unmistakably
nervous.

Dahlia closed the door, and stood there for a moment before coming
forward.

"Robin--at last!" and she held out both hands to him. They were the
same words that his aunt had used to his father last night, he
remembered foolishly, and at once they seemed strained, false,
ridiculous!

He took her hand and said something about being in time; then, as she
seemed to expect it, he bent down and kissed her.

She was pretty in a rather obvious way. If there had been less
artificiality there would have been more charm; of middle height, she
was slim and dark, and her hair, parted in the middle, fell in waves
over her temples. She affected a rather simple, aesthetic manner that
suited her dark eyes and rather pale complexion. You said that she was
intense until you knew her. To-night she wore a rather pretty dress of
some dark-brown stuff, cut low at the neck, and with her long white
arms bare. She had obviously taken a good deal of trouble this
evening, and had undoubtedly succeeded.