ssness shone out to her desirable as a star.

"No, she has never once mentioned your name, Mr. Thresk."

Again Thresk was conscious of the little pulse of resentment beating at
his heart.

"She has no doubt forgotten me."

Mrs. Repton shook her head.

"That's one explanation. There might be another."

"What is it?"

"That she remembers you too much."

Mrs. Repton was a little startled by her own audacity, but it provoked
nothing but an incredulous laugh from her companion.

"I am afraid that's not very likely," he said. There was no hint of
elation in his voice nor any annoyance. If he felt either, why, he was on
guard no less than she. Mrs. Repton was inclined to throw up her hands in
despair. She was baffled and she was little likely, as she knew, to get
any light.

"If you take the man you know best of all," she used to say, "you still
know nothing at all of what he's like when he's alone with a woman,
especially if it's a woman for whom he cares--unless the woman talks."

Very often the woman does talk and the most intimate and private facts
come in a little while to be shouted from the housetops. But Stella
Ballantyne did not talk. She had talked once, and once only, under a
great stress to Jane Repton; but even then Thresk had nothing to do with
her story at all.

Thresk turned quickly towards her.

"In a moment Mrs. Carruthers will get up. Her eyes are collecting
the women and the women are collecting their shoes. What have you
to tell me?"

Mrs. Repton wanted to speak. Thresk gave her confidence. He seemed to be
a man without many illusions, he was no romantic sentimentalist. She went
back to the poem of which the lines had been chasing one another through
her head all through this dinner, as a sort of accompaniment to their
conversation. Had he found it out? she asked herself--

"The world and what it fears."

Thus she hung hesitating while Mrs. Carruthers gathered in her hands her
gloves and her fan. There was a woman at the other end of the table
however who would not stop talking. She was in the midst of some story
and heeded not the signals of her hostess. Jane Repton wished she would
go on talking for the rest of the evening, and recognised that the wish
was a waste of time and grew flurried. She had to make up her mind to say
something which should be true or to lie. Yet she was too staunch to
betray the confidence of her friend unless the betrayal meant her
friend's salvation. But ju