hostess of to-night long?" Sir Donald asked
presently.

"A good while--quite a good while. But I'm very much away at Rome now.
Since I have been there she has married."

"I have only met her to speak to once before to-night, though I have
seen her about very often and heard her sing."

"Ah!"

"To me she is an enigma," Sir Donald continued with some hesitation. "I
cannot make her out at all."

Robin Pierce smiled in the dark and thrust his hands deep down in the
pockets of his overcoat.

"I don't know," Sir Donald resumed, after a slight pause, "I don't know
what is your--whether you care much for beauty in its innumerable forms.
Many young men don't, I believe."

"I do," said Robin. "My mother is an Italian, you know, and not an
Italian Philistine."

"Then you can help me, perhaps. Does Lady Holme care for beauty? But she
must. It is impossible that she does not."

"Do you think so? Why?"

"I really cannot reconcile myself to the idea that such performances as
hers are matters of chance."

"They are not. Lady Holme is not a woman who chances things before the
cruel world in which she, you and I live, Sir Donald."

"Exactly. I felt sure of that. Then we come to calculation of effects,
to consideration of that very interesting question--self-consciousness
in art."

"Do you feel that Lady Holme is self-conscious when she is singing?"

"No. And that is just the point. She must, I suppose, have studied
till she has reached that last stage of accomplishment in which the
self-consciousness present is so perfectly concealed that it seems to be
eliminated."

"Exactly. She has an absolute command over her means."

"One cannot deny it. No musician could contest it. But the question that
interests me lies behind all this. There is more than accomplishment in
her performance. There is temperament, there is mind, there is emotion
and complete understanding. I am scarcely speaking strongly enough in
saying complete--perhaps infinitely subtle would be nearer the mark.
What do you say?"

"I don't think if you said that there appears to be an infinitely subtle
understanding at work in Lady Holme's singing you would be going at all
too far."

"Appears to be?"

Sir Donald stopped for a moment on the pavement under a gas-lamp. As the
light fell on him he looked like a weary old ghost longing to fade away
into the dark shadows of the London night.

"You say 'appears to be,'" he repeated.

"Yes."

"May I ask w