he face of a stranger. For a moment
she looked at herself as at a stranger, seeing her beauty with a curious
detachment, and admiring it without personal vanity or egoism, or any
small, triumphant feeling. Yet it was not her beauty which fascinated
her eyes, but an imaginative look in them and in the whole face. For
the first time she fully realised why she had a curious, an evocative,
influence on certain people, why she called the hidden children of the
secret places of their souls, why those children heard, and stretched
out their hands, and lifted their eyes and opened their lips.

There was a summoning, and yet a distant expression in her eyes. She
saw it herself. They were like eyes that had looked on magic, that would
look on magic again.

A maid came to help her. In a moment she had picked up her bouquet of
roses and her music-case, and was back in the green drawing-room.

There were more people in it now. Fritz was still hovering about looking
remarkably out of place and strangely ill at ease. To-day his usual
imperturbable self-confidence had certainly deserted him. He spoke
to people but his eyes were on the door. Lady Holme knew that he
was waiting for Miss Schley. She felt a sort of vague pity for his
uneasiness. It was time for the concert to begin, but the Princesses
had not yet arrived. A murmur of many voices came from the hidden room
beyond the screen where the audience was assembled. Several of the
performers began to look rather strung up. They smiled and talked with
slightly more vivacity than was quite natural in them. One or two of the
singers glanced over their songs, and pointed out certain effects they
meant to make to the principal accompanist, an abnormally thin boy
with thick dark hair and flushed cheeks. He expressed comprehension,
emphasising it by finger-taps on the music and a continual, "I see!
I see!" Two or three of the members of the committee looked at their
watches, and the murmur of conversation in the hidden concert-room rose
into a dull roar.

Lady Holme sat down on a sofa. Sometimes when she was going to sing she
felt nervous. There are very few really accomplished artists who do
not. But to-day she was not at all nervous. She knew she was going to do
well--as well as when she sang to Lady Cardington, even better. She felt
almost as if she were made of music, as if music were part of her, ran
in her veins like blood, shone in her eyes like light, beat in her heart
like the