est, leaped from her carriage and took
her into her arms; the parents were destitute and she bought the child
from them. She is the very soul of generosity."

"She doesn't look like a peasant," said the girl, with a flavour of
discontent, as though a more apparent rusticity would have lent special
magnanimity to Madame Okraska's benevolence. But the massive lady
assured her: "Oh yes, it is the true Norse type; their peasantry has its
patrician quality. I have been to Norway. Sir Alliston looks very much
moved, doesn't he? He has been in love with Madame Okraska for years."
And she added with a deep sigh of satisfaction: "There has never been a
word whispered against her reputation; never a word--'Pure as the foam
on midmost ocean tossed.'"

Among the crowds thronging densely to their places, a young man of
soldierly aspect, with a dark, narrow face, black hair and square blue
eyes, was making his way to a seat in the third row of stalls. His name
was Gregory Jardine; he was not a soldier--though he looked one--but a
barrister, and he was content to count himself, not altogether
incorrectly, a Philistine in all matters aesthetic. Good music he
listened to with, as he put it, unintelligent and barbarous enjoyment;
and since he had, shamefully, never yet heard the great pianist, he had
bought the best stall procurable some weeks before, and now, after a
taxing day in the law courts, had foregone his after-dinner coffee in
order not to miss one note of the opening Appassionata; it was a sonata
he was very fond of. He sometimes picked out the air of the slow
movement on the piano with heavy deliberation; his musical equipment did
not carry him as far as the variations.

When he reached his seat he found it to be by chance next that of his
sister-in-law, his brother Oliver's wife, a pretty, jewelled and
jewel-like young woman, an American of a complicatedly cosmopolitan
type. Gregory liked Betty Jardine, and always wondered how she had come
to marry Oliver, whom he rather scorned; but he was not altogether
pleased to find her near him. He preferred to take his music in
solitude; and Betty was very talkative.

"Well, this is nice, Gregory!" she said. "You and Captain Ashton know
each other, don't you. No, I couldn't persuade Oliver to come; he
wouldn't give up his whist. Isn't Oliver dreadful; he moves from the
saddle to the whist-table, and back again; and that is all. Captain
Ashton and I have been comparing notes; we fi