ich
stood at long intervals, was steeped in the clear electric light, and
from where he sat he could see that there was no person visible
throughout its entire length.

Then as his gaze travelled back it rested on something which had
certainly not been lying where he now saw it at the time of his
entrance.

Not six paces behind him, stretched across the dark carpeting, in the
very centre of the pillared vista, lay a woman's long glove.

A woman's glove possesses a peculiar charm for all men. Perhaps it
suggests some of the sweet mystery of womanhood. The first action of
most young men in Rallywood's place would have been to raise it at once
and to examine it, as though in some impalpable manner it could tell
something of its unknown wearer, who might turn out to be the Hathor,
the one woman in the world.

But the circumstances of Rallywood's life, and perhaps also some
exclusive element in his character, had heretofore set him rather apart
from the influence of women. He had grown to regard them without
curiosity, which is the last stage indifference can reach.

It must be admitted that it was with a feeling akin to repugnance that
he at last lifted the long, soft, pale-hued, faintly-scented _suede_
from the floor and dangled it at an unnecessary distance from his eyes,
holding it as he did so daintily between finger and thumb. Its subtle
appeal to his senses as a man failed to reach him. It simply aroused an
old feeling of reserve toward the sex it represented. His face altered
slightly and he dropped it suddenly with an odd repulsion, as he might
have dropped a snake, on a couch near by.

Then he resumed his chair and turned his back upon it, till the
reflection that the woman to whom it belonged must have come and gone
while he sat thinking with his back to the corridor sent him wheeling
round again.

The glove still lay where he had placed it on the edge of the couch,
palm upwards and with a suggestion of helplessness and pleading. It
annoyed him unreasonably. He frowned and looked at his watch. Half an
hour had passed since Selpdorf dismissed him.

At that moment a guttural voice broke the silence of the house, and the
heavy curtain over the door at the nearer end of the ante-room was
thrust back by a brusque hand, and a tall, high-shouldered, handsome
man, dressed as if he were about to attend some Court function, stood in
the opening. Behind him Rallywood caught sight of a flurried and
explanatory lack