r one moment at the time. The two extra lamps upon the
dinner-table had probably been placed there at her own request, but
it was beyond dispute that she showed to far greater advantage in the
subdued light in which she now sat Time had had no great opportunity of
ravishing her good looks as yet, but a certain boldness and bluntness of
feature which denied her complete right to beauty was lost here, and her
complexion was subdued, so that to the eye of her companion she looked
bewitching, and everybody knows how far easier it is to condone a breach
of taste in a beautiful woman than in a plain one. But now as the talk
went on and grew momentarily more intimate, Paul was made to see that he
was in the presence of a suffering heart, that he was speaking with one
who had never been able to come into contact with another soul. 'We live
apart from each other, all of us, Mr. Armstrong,' she said. 'It is only
the artist, only the thinker and dreamer, who cares to grieve over it
all; but there is something appalling in the thought that no one soul
really touches another. You shake your head,' she said. 'Forgive me, but
you are young, and you are not yet disillusionized.'

'I have a right to be in some things,' Paul said to himself; but he made
no verbal answer.

'No,' she went on in a tone of tender regret in the pretty purring
American voice, which of itself was like the touch of a soft hand. 'We
are born to isolation. As one grows older----'

Paul laughed at that outright It was his first laugh for quite a lengthy
space of time, and he enjoyed it.

'Oh,' said the lady, taking the implied compliment quite seriously, 'I
am not a centenarian, but I am two-and-thirty, Mr. Armstrong, and in the
course of two-and-thirty years one may do a very considerable amount of
living. I say it advisedly, as one grows older the recognition of that
isolation of which I have spoken grows more and more complete. It beats
one down into despair at times; but then one is here for other things
than despair: one is here for duty; one is here to suffer, and to gather
strength by suffering; that is the whole secret of our destiny. It is
simple enough, and yet how long it takes to learn the lesson truly!'

Beyond this no great progress was made on that first evening, but it
appeared that the lady had come to stay for at least a little time.
It is probable that she had not often found so very responsive an
instrument to play upon, for Paul Armstrong's