nd that we have missed
hardly any of Madame Okraska's concerts in London. I was only ten when I
heard the first she ever gave here; my governess took me; and actually
Captain Ashton was here on that day, too. Wasn't she a miracle of
loveliness? It was twenty years ago; she had already her European
reputation. It was just after she had divorced that horrible first
husband of hers and married the Baron von Marwitz. This isn't your
initiation, of course, Gregory?"

"Actually my initiation," said Gregory, examining the portrait of Madame
Okraska on the cover of the programme.

"But you've seen her at Mrs. Forrester's? She always stays with Mrs.
Forrester."

"I know; but I've always missed her, or, at all events, never been asked
to meet her."

"I certainly never have been," said Betty Jardine. "But Mrs. Forrester
thinks of me as frivolity personified, I know, and doesn't care to admit
anything lower than a cabinet minister or a poet laureate when she has
her lion domiciled. She is an old darling; but, between ourselves, she
does take her lions a little too seriously, doesn't she. Well, prepare
for a _coup de foudre_, Gregory. You'll be sure to fall in love with
her. Everybody falls in love with her. Captain Ashton has been in love
with her for twenty years. She is extraordinary."

"I'm ready to be subjugated," said Gregory. "Do people really hang on
her hands and kiss them? Shall I want to hang on her hands and kiss
them?"

"There is no telling what she will do with us," said Lady Jardine.

Gregory Jardine's face, however, was not framed to express enthusiasm.
It was caustic, cold and delicate. His eyes were as clear and as hard as
a sky of frosty morning, and his small, firm lips were hard. His chin
and lower lip advanced slightly, so that when he smiled his teeth met
edge to edge, and the little black moustache, to which he often gave an
absent upward twist, lent an ironic quality to this chill, gay smile, at
times almost Mephistophelian. He sat twisting the moustache now, leaning
his head to listen, amidst the babel of voices, to Betty Jardine's
chatter, and the thrills of infectious expectancy that passed over the
audience like breezes over a corn-field left him unaffected. His
observant, indifferent glance had in it something of the schoolboy's
barbarian calm and something of the disabused impersonality of worldly
experience.

"Who is the young lady with Mrs. Forrester?" he asked presently. "In
white, with y