and tender; it vibrated with drama; it was instinct with calm
and kindly wisdom. In my humility, I found I had not known my Adrian one
little bit. As the shepherd of old who had a sort of patronizing
affection for the irresponsible, dancing, flute-playing, goat-footed
creature of the woodland was stricken with panic when he recognised the
god, so was I convulsed when I recognised the genius of my friend
Adrian. And the fellow still went on dancing and flute-playing and I
stared at him open-mouthed.

Mr. Jornicroft, who was a widower, gave a great dinner party at his
house in Park Crescent, in honour of the engagement. My wife and I
attended, fishes somewhat out of water amid this brilliant but solid
assembly of what it pleased Barbara to call "merchantates." She
expressed a desire to shrink out of the glare of the diamonds; but she
wore her grandmother's pearls, and, being by far the youngest and
prettiest matron present, held her own with the best of them. There were
stout women, thin women, white-haired women, women who ought to have
been white-haired, but were not; sprightly and fashionable women; but
besides Barbara, the only other young woman was Doria herself.

She took us aside, as soon as we were released from the formal welcome
of Mr. Jornicroft, a thickset man with a very bald head and heavy black
moustache.

"The sight of you two is like a breath of fresh air. Did you ever meet
with anything so stuffy?"

Now, considering that all these prosperous folks had come to do her
homage I thought the remark rather ungracious.

"It's apt to be stuffy in July in London," I said.

She laid her hand on Barbara's wrist and pointed at me with her fan.

"He thinks he's rebuking me. But I don't care. I'm glad to see him all
the same. These people mean nothing but money and music-halls and bridge
and restaurants--I'm so sick of it. You two mean something else."

"Don't speak sacrilegiously of restaurants, even though you are going to
marry a genius," said I. "There is one in Paris to which Adrian will
take you straight--like a homing bird."

"Wherever Adrian takes me, it will be beautiful," she said defiantly.

My little critical humour vanished, for she looked so valiantly adorable
in her love for the man. She was very small and slenderly made, with
dark hair, luminous eyes, and ivory-white complexion, a sensitive nose
and mouth, a wisp of nerves and passion. She carried her head high and,
for so diminutive a pers