"I think I shall die before that comes--say at forty-five. I couldn't live with wrinkles all over my face. No, Robin, I couldn't. And--look at Mrs. Ulford!--perhaps an ear-trumpet set with opals."

"What do the wrinkles matter? But some day you'll find I'm right. You'll tell me so. You'll acknowledge that your charm comes from within, and has survived the mutilation of the husk."

"Mutilation! What a hideous sound that word has. Why don't all mutilated people commit suicide at once? I should. Is Sir Donald going to live in his happy house?"

"Naturally. He'll be there this August. He's invited Rupert Carey to stay there with him."

"And you?"

"Not yet."

"I suppose he will. Everybody always asks you everywhere. Diplomacy is so universally--"

She broke off. Far away, at the end of the gallery, she had caught sight of Miss Schley coming in with her husband. They sat down at a table near the door. Robin Pierce followed her eyes and understood her silence.

"Are you going on the first?" he asked.

"What to?"

"Miss Schley's first night."

"Is it on the first? I didn't know. We can't. We're dining at Brayley House that evening."

"What a pity!" he said, with a light touch of half playful malice. "You would have seen her as she really is--from all accounts."

"And what is Miss Schley really?"

"The secret enemy of censors."

"Oh!"

"You dislike her. Why?"

"I don't dislike her at all."

"Do you like her?"

"No. I like very few women. I don't understand them."

"At any rate you understand--say Miss Schley--better than a man would."

"Oh--a man!"

"I believe all women think all men fools."

Lady Holme laughed, not very gaily.

"Don't they?" he insisted.

"In certain ways, in certain relations of life, I suppose most men are--rather short-sighted."

"Like Mr. Bry."

"Mr. Bry is the least short-sighted man I know. That's why he always wears an eyeglass."

"To create an illusion?"

"Who knows?"

She looked down the long room. Between the heads of innumerable men and women she could see Miss Schley. Her husband was hidden. She would have preferred to see him. Miss Schley's head was by no means expressive of the naked truth. It merely looked cool, self-possessed, and--so Lady Holme said to herself--extremely American. What she meant by that she could, perhaps, hardly have explained.

"Do you admire Miss Schley's appearance?"

Robin Pierce spoke again with a touch of humorous malice. He knew Lady Holme so well that he had no objection to seem wanting in tact to her when he had a secret end to gain. She looked at him sharply; leaning forward over the table and opening her eyes very wide.

"Why are you forgetting your manners to-night and bombarding me with questions?"

"The usual reason--devouring curiosity."

She hesitated, looking at him. Then suddenly her face changed.

Something, some imp of adorable frankness, peeped out of it at him, and her whole body seemed confiding.

"Miss Schley is going about London imitating me. Now, isn't that true?

Isn't she?"

"I believe she is. Damned impertinence!"

He muttered the last words under his breath.

"How can I admire her?"

There was something in the way she said that which touched him. He leaned forward to her.

"Why not punish her for it?"

"How?"

"Reveal what she can't imitate."

"What's that?"

"All you hide and I divine."

"Go on."

"She mimics the husk. She couldn't mimic the kernel."

"Ice, my lady?"