ht
figure supplied any grace that was wanting in the draperies. That black
and white was a splendid foil for Audrey's burnished hair and her dress,
an ingenious medley of flesh-pink, apple-green, and ivory silk.

"One moment, dear; just let me pin that chiffon up on your shoulder, to
make your sleeves look wider--there!" She hovered round Katherine,
spying out the weak points in her dress, and disguising them with quick,
skillful fingers. A woman never looks more charming than when doing
these little services for another. So Ted thought, as he watched Audrey
laying her white arms about his sister, and putting her head on one
side to survey the effect critically. To the boy, with his senses
sharpened to an almost feverish subtilty by the incessant stimulus of
his imagination, Audrey was the epitome of everything most completely
and joyously alive. Roses, sunlight, flame, with the shifting, waving
lines of all things most fluent and elusive, were in her face, her hair,
the movements of her limbs. Her body was like a soul to its clothes; it
animated, inspired the mass of silk and lace. He could not think of her
as she was--the creature of the day and the hour, modern from the
surface to the core. Yet never had she looked more modern than at this
moment; never had that vivid quality, that touch of artificial
distinction, appeared more stereotyped in its very perfection and
finish. But Ted, in the first religious fervour of his passion, had
painted her as the Saint of the Beatific Vision; and in the same way, to
Ted, ever since that evening on the river, she recalled none but
open-air images. She was linked by flowery chains of association to an
idyllic past--a past of four days ago. Her very caprices suggested the
shy approaches and withdrawals of some divinity of nature. It was by
these harmless fictions, each new one rising on the ruins of the old,
that Ted managed to keep his ideal of Audrey intact.

There was a slight stir in the passage outside the half-open door.
Audrey, still busy about Katherine's dress, seemed not to hear it.

"My dear Audrey!" protested Miss Craven from her corner.

"There, that'll do!" said Katherine, laughing; "you've stuck quite
enough pins into me for one night."

"Stand still, and don't wiggle!" cried Audrey, as the door opened wide.
For a second she was conscious of being watched by eyes that were not
Ted's or anything like them. At the same time the footman announced in a
firm, clear v