facing each
other, Vi and Leighton sat down, the fire between them.

They had been silent for a long time. Vi had been twisting her fingers,
staring at them. Her lips were half open and mobile. She was even
flushed. Suddenly she locked her hands and leaned forward.

"Grapes," she said without a drawl, "I have seen myself. It is terrible.
Nothing is left."

Leighton rose and stepped into his den. He came back slowly with two
pictures in his hands.

"Look at these," he said. "If you were ten years older, you'd only have
to glance at them, and they'd open a door to memory."

Vi gazed at the pictures, small paintings of two famous Spanish dancers.
One was beautiful, languorous, carnal; the other was neither languorous
nor carnal despite her wonderful body, and she was certainly not
beautiful. Vi laid the second picture down and held the first. Then
almost unconsciously she reached out her hand for the discarded picture.
Gradually the face that was not beautiful drew her until attention grew
into absorption. The portrait of the languorous beauty fell to her lap
and then slipped to the floor, face down. Leighton laughed.

Vi glanced up.

"Why?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," said Leighton, "except that the effect those pictures had
on you is an exact parallel to the way the two originals influenced men.
For that----" Leighton waved a hand at the picture on the floor--"men
gave all they possessed in the way of worldly goods, and then Wondered
why they'd done it. But for her--the one you 're looking at----"

He broke off. "You never heard of De Larade? De Larade spent all of his
short life looking for animate beauty, and worshiping it when he found
it. But he died leaning too far over a balcony to pick a flower for the
Woman you're staring at."

"Why?" asked Vi again. "You knew her, of course. Tell me about her."

"I'm going to," said Leighton. "The first time I saw her on the stage
she seemed to me merely an extra-graceful and extra-sensuous Spanish
dancer. Nothing to rave over, nothing to stimulate a jaded palate. I
could have met her; I decided I didn't want to. Later on I did meet her,
not in her dressing-room, but at a house where she was the last person I
expected to see."

Leighton picked up a cigarette, lighted it, and sat down.

"The place ought to have protected her," he continued, "but when you've
seen two thirds of a woman's body, it takes a lot of atmosphere to make
you forget it. We were in a corner by