ely, wherewith to disguise those much greater things which,
perforce, remained unsaid.--To cover his and her lively consciousness
of their present isolation, desired these many days and now obtained.
To conceal the swift, silent approaches of spirit to spirit, so full of
inquiry and self-revelation, fugitive reserves and fugitive distrusts.
To hide, as far as might be, the existence of the hungry,
all-compelling _joie de vivre_ which is begotten whensoever youth thus
seeks and finds youth.--These unspoken and, as yet, unspeakable things
were alone of real moment, making eyes lustrous and lips quick with
tremulous, uncalled-for smiles irrespective of the purport of their
speech.

"Ah! but that's rather rough on poor dear Julius, you know," Dickie
said. "I suppose you wanted to learn all----"

"Learn?" she interrupted. "I wanted to feel. Don't you know there is
only one way any woman worth the name ever really learns--through her
emotions? Only the living feel. Such men as he, if they are sincere,
are already dead. He would have made feeling impossible."

A perceptible hush descended upon the room. Richard Calmady's hand
usually was steady enough, but, in the silence, the pearls chattered
against the table. He went rather pale and his face hardened.

"And are you getting anything of that which you wanted, Helen?" he
asked. "For sometimes in the last few days--since you have been
here--I--I have wondered if perhaps we were not all like that--all
dead----"

"You mean do I get emotion, am I feeling?" she said. "Rest contented.
Much is happening. Indeed I have doubted, during the last few days,
since I have been here, whether I have ever known what it is to feel
actually and seriously before."

She sat down at right angles to him, resting her elbows upon the table,
her chin upon her folded hands, leaning a little towards him. One of
those pleasant heats swept over her, flushing her delicate skin,
lending a certain effulgence to her beauty. The scent of roses long
faded hung in the air. But here was a rose sweeter far than they. No
white rose of paradise, it must be confessed. Rather like her immortal
namesake, that classic Helen, was she _rosa mundi_, glowing with warmth
and colour, rose-red rose altogether of this dear, naughty, lower
world?

"Richard," she said impulsively, "why don't you understand? Why do you
underrate your own power? Don't you know that you are quite the most
moving, the most attractive--well--c