this splendid
program. For it _is_ splendid. But New York will miss you, John."

"Ah, no. I've no delusions on that score. I dare say I'm almost
forgotten there already. Here I have a _place_."

Her head, leaned back against the cushion, turned toward him, the pale
orchids trembling on her bosom--she was so near that he could feel her
breath on his cheek. A new waltz had begun to sigh its languorous
measures.

"Place?" she queried. "Do you think you had no place there? Is it
possible that you do not understand that your going has left--a void?"

He looked at her suddenly, and her eyes fell. No sophisticated blushing
this, though it was by such effective employment of her charms that her
wonderful body and pliant mind had been drilled and fashioned from her
babyhood. Katharine at the moment was as near the luxury of real
embarrassment as she had ever been in her life.

Before he answered, however, the big form of Major Bristow appeared,
looking about him.

"It has--left a void," she said, her eyes still downcast, her voice just
low enough, "--for _me_."

The major pounced upon them at this juncture, feelingly accusing John of
the nefarious design of robbing the assemblage of its bright and
particular star. When Katharine put her hand in her cavalier's arm, her
eyes were dewy under their long shading lashes and her fine lips ever so
little tremulous. It had been her best available moment, and she had
used it.

As she moved away, her faint color slightly heightened, she was glad of
the interruption. It was better as it was. When John Valiant came to her
again....

But to him, as he stood watching her move lightly from him, there was
vouchsafed illumination. It came to him suddenly that that placidity and
hauteur which he had so admired in the old days were no mask for fires
within. The exquisite husk was the real Katharine. Hers was the
loveliness of some tall white lily cut in marble, splendid but chill.
And with the thought, between him and her there swept through the
shimmering candle-lighted air a breath of wet rose-fragrance like an
impalpable cloud, and set in the midst of it a misty star-tinted gown
sprayed with lilies-of-the-valley, and above it a girl's face clear and
vivid, her deep shadow-blue eyes fixed on his.

The music of a two-step was languishing when, a little later, Valiant
and Shirley strolled down between the garden box-hedges, cypress-shaped
and lifting spire-like toward a sky which bent,