freedom seemed bred, imperceptibly and
enjoyably, from the delicate cloud in the air. Alicia flushed ever so
little under it, but took it without wincing. She had less than the
common palate for flattery of the obvious kind, but this was something
different--a mere casual and unprejudiced statement of fact.

"Fairly," she said, not without surprise at her own calmness; and there
was an instant of silence, during which the commonplace seemed to be
dismissed between them.

"You made a vivid impression here last year," said Alicia. She felt
delightfully terse and to the point.

"You mean Mr. Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay is very impressionable. Do you know
him well?"

Alicia closed her lips, and a faint line graved itself on each side of
them. Her whole face sounded a retreat, and her eyes were cold--it would
have annoyed her to know how cold--with distance.

"He is an old friend of my brother's," she said. Hilda had the sensation
of coming unexpectedly, through the lightest loam, upon a hard surface.
She looked attentively at the red heart of her cigarette crisped over
with grey, in its blackened calyx.

"Most impressionable," she went on, as if Alicia had not spoken. "As to
the rest of the people--bah! you can't rouse Calcutta. It is sunk in its
torpid liver, and imagines itself superior. It's really funny, you know,
the way hepatic influences can be idealised--made to serve ennobling
ends. But Mr. Lindsay is--different."

"Yes?" Miss Livingstone's intention was neutral, but, in spite of her,
the asking note was in the word.

"We have done some interesting things together here. He has shown me the
queerest places. Yesterday he made me go with him to Wellesley Square,
to look at his latest enthusiasm standing in the middle of it."

"A statue?"

"No, a woman, preaching and warbling to the people. She wasn't new to
me--I knew her before he did--but the picture was, and the performance.
She stood poised on a coolie's basket in the midst of a rabble of all
colours, like a fallen angel--I mean a dropped one. Light seemed to come
from her, from her hair or her eyes or something. I almost expected to
see her sail away over the palms into the sunset when it was ended."

"It sounds most unusual," Alicia said, with a light smile. Her interest
was rather obviously curbed.

"It happens every day, really, only one doesn't stop and look; one
doesn't go round the corner."

There was another little silence, full of the unwillingne