couldn't. And--look at
Mrs. Ulford!--perhaps an ear-trumpet set with opals."

"What do the wrinkles matter? But some day you'll find I'm right. You'll
tell me so. You'll acknowledge that your charm comes from within, and
has survived the mutilation of the husk."

"Mutilation! What a hideous sound that word has. Why don't all mutilated
people commit suicide at once? I should. Is Sir Donald going to live in
his happy house?"

"Naturally. He'll be there this August. He's invited Rupert Carey to
stay there with him."

"And you?"

"Not yet."

"I suppose he will. Everybody always asks you everywhere. Diplomacy is
so universally--"

She broke off. Far away, at the end of the gallery, she had caught sight
of Miss Schley coming in with her husband. They sat down at a table near
the door. Robin Pierce followed her eyes and understood her silence.

"Are you going on the first?" he asked.

"What to?"

"Miss Schley's first night."

"Is it on the first? I didn't know. We can't. We're dining at Brayley
House that evening."

"What a pity!" he said, with a light touch of half playful malice. "You
would have seen her as she really is--from all accounts."

"And what is Miss Schley really?"

"The secret enemy of censors."

"Oh!"

"You dislike her. Why?"

"I don't dislike her at all."

"Do you like her?"

"No. I like very few women. I don't understand them."

"At any rate you understand--say Miss Schley--better than a man would."

"Oh--a man!"

"I believe all women think all men fools."

Lady Holme laughed, not very gaily.

"Don't they?" he insisted.

"In certain ways, in certain relations of life, I suppose most men
are--rather short-sighted."

"Like Mr. Bry."

"Mr. Bry is the least short-sighted man I know. That's why he always
wears an eyeglass."

"To create an illusion?"

"Who knows?"

She looked down the long room. Between the heads of innumerable men and
women she could see Miss Schley. Her husband was hidden. She would have
preferred to see him. Miss Schley's head was by no means expressive of
the naked truth. It merely looked cool, self-possessed, and--so Lady
Holme said to herself--extremely American. What she meant by that she
could, perhaps, hardly have explained.

"Do you admire Miss Schley's appearance?"

Robin Pierce spoke again with a touch of humorous malice. He knew Lady
Holme so well that he had no objection to seem wanting in tact to her
when he had a secret end to gain. She