That night was my first effort in the vindication of Elsie Wylton. I believe we dined at the Berkeley and went on to Daly's. The place is immaterial; wherever we went we found--or so it seemed to our over-sensitive, suspicious nerves--a slight hush, a movement of turning bodies and craning necks, a whispered name. Elsie went through it like a Royal Duchess opening a bazaar; laughing and talking with the Seraph, turning to throw a word to Joyce or myself; untroubled, indifferent--best of all, perfectly restrained. The hard-bought actress-training of immemorial centuries should give woman some superiority over man....

We certainly supped at the Carlton in a prominent position by the door. I fancy no one missed seeing us. The Seraph knew everybody, of course, and I had picked up a certain number of acquaintances in two months. We bowed to every familiar form, and the familiar forms bowed back to us. When they passed near our table we hypnotised them into talking, and they brought their women-folk with them....

When supper was ended we moved outside for coffee and cigars, so that none who had entered the supper room before us should leave without running the gauntlet. We had our share of black looks and noses in air, directed I suppose against Joyce as much as against her sister; and many a mild husband must have submitted to a curtain lecture that night on the text that no man will believe political or moral evil of any woman with a pretty face. The older I get the truer I find that text; I cannot remember the day when I was without the instinct underlying such a belief.

At a quarter-past twelve Elsie began to flag, and we started our preparations for returning home. As I waited for my bill--and swore a private oath that Gartside should translate his sympathy into acts, and join our moral-leper colony before the week was out--an unexpected party emerged from the restaurant and passed us on their way to collect cloaks. Gladys and Philip, Sylvia and Robin, driven home from Ranelagh by the impossibility of securing a table for dinner, had eaten sketchily at Cadogan Square, hurried to the Palace, and turned in to the Carlton to make up for lost food.

The Seraph of course saw them first, rose up and bowed. I followed, and both of us were rewarded by a gracious acknowledgment from Sylvia.

Then she caught sight of Joyce and Elsie, and her mouth straightened itself and lost its smile. The change was slight, but I had been expecting it. Another moment, and the straight lines broke to a slight curve. Every one bowed to every one--Robin with his irrepressible, instinctive good-humour, Philip more sedately, as befitted a public man, the eldest son of the Attorney-General, and an avowed opponent of the Militant Suffrage Movement. Then Sylvia passed on to get her cloak, I arranged with Philip to take Gladys home, we bowed again and parted.

The whole encounter had taken less than two minutes. It was more than enough to make Elsie say she must decline my invitation to Henley.

"A public place is one thing, and a houseboat's another," she said.

"You wouldn't invite two people to stay with you if you knew the mere presence of one was distasteful to the other."

"You've got to go the whole road," I said. "If the Rodens know me, they've got to know my friends."

"We mustn't be in too much of a hurry," she answered. "I'm right, aren't I, Joyce? There's no scandal about Joyce, but she's given up visiting with the Rodens. It was beginning to get rather uncomfortable."

The matter was compromised by the Seraph inviting Elsie to come to Henley in an independent party of two. They would then secure as much publicity as could be desired without causing any kind of embarrassment to a private gathering.

I saw nothing of Sylvia until Gartside's Soiree Musicale three nights later. The Seraph dined with us, and when Philip snatched Gladys from under my wing almost before the car had turned into Carlton House Terrace, I retired with him into an inviting balcony and watched the female side of human nature at work.

Sylvia stood twelve feet from us, looking radiant. Instinctive wisdom had led her to dress--as ever--in white, and to wear no jewellery but pearls. Her black hair seemed silkier and more luxuriant than ever; her dark eyes flashed with a certain proud vitality and assurance.

Nigel Rawnsley was talking to her, talking well, and paying her the compliment of talking up to her level. I watched her give thrust for thrust, parry for parry; all exquisite sword play.... His enemies called Nigel a prig, even his friends complained he was overbearing; I liked him, as I contrive to like most men, and only wish he could meet more people of his own mental calibre. He had met one in Sylvia; there was no button to his foil when he fenced with her.

"Thus far and no farther," I murmured.

The Seraph looked up, but I had only been thinking aloud. I was wondering why she painted that sign over her door when Nigel approached. A career of brilliant achievement and more brilliant promise, her own chosen faith and ritual, ambition enough and to spare--Nigel entered the lists well armed, and she was the only one who could humanise him. I wondered what gulf of temperamental antipathy parted them and placed him without the pale....

They talked till Culling interposed his claim for attention, preferring the request with triplicated brogue. From time to time Gartside strayed away from his other guests and shivered a lance in deferential tourney. As I watched his fine figure, and looked from him to the irrepressible Culling, and from Culling to Rawnsley's clear-cut, intellectual face, I asked myself for the thousandth time what indescribable affinity could be equally lacking in three men otherwise so dissimilar.

With light-hearted carelessness she guarded the sword's length of territory that divided them. It was adroit, nimble fencing, but I wondered how much it amused her. Not many women can resist the age-long fascination of playing off one admirer against another; but I should have written Sylvia down among the exceptions. She did not want admiration.... Then I remembered Oxford and read into her conduct the first calculated stages in the Seraph's castigation. If this were her object, it failed; the Seraph was ignorant of the very nature of jealousy. In the light of their subsequent meeting, I doubt if this were even her motive.

We had both received a distant bow as we entered the room, but not a word had been vouchsafed us. I am afraid my nature is too indolent to be greatly upset by this kind of neglect. The Seraph, I could see, grew rather unhappy when his presence was overlooked every time he came within speaking distance. It was not till the end of the evening that she unbent. I had promised to take Gladys on to a ball, and at eleven I came out of hiding and went in search of her. Culling had just been told off to find Robin, and Sylvia stood alone.

"Are you going on anywhere?" she asked the Seraph when they had the room to themselves.

"It's the Marlthrops, isn't it?" he asked.

"And Lady Carsten. Robin and I are going there. Are you coming?"

The Seraph's hand went to his pocket and made pretence of weighing three or four invitations in the balance. Finally he selected the Carsten card and glanced at it with an air of doubt.

"Will my presence be welcome?" he asked.

"You must ask Lady Carsten, she's invited you."

"Welcome to you?"

"It depends on yourself."

"What must I do?"

Sylvia pursed up her mouth and looked at him with head on one side.

"Be a little more particular in the company you keep."

"I usually am."

"With some startling lapses."

"I'm not aware of any."

Sylvia drew herself up to her full height.

"How have you spent the last week?"

"In a variety of ways."

"In a variety of company?"

"The same nearly all the time."

She nodded.

"This is my objection."

"If _she_ doesn't object...." A dawning flush on Sylvia's cheek warned him to leave the sentence unfinished.

"I'm giving you advice for your own sake because, apparently, you've no one else to advise you," she said with the slow, elaborate carelessness of one who is with difficulty keeping her temper. "You've spent the last week thrusting yourself under every one's notice in company with a woman who's just been divorced from her husband. Every one's seen you, every one's talking about you. If you like that sort of notoriety...."

"Can it be avoided?"

"You can drop the woman."

"She's none too many friends."

"She's one too many."

"I cannot agree."

"Then you put yourself on her level."

"I should be proud to rank with her."

Sylvia paused a moment to steady her voice.