"For Heaven's sake not to Miss Filberte's accompaniment!"

"Very well. But come and sit where you can see me."

"I won't," he said with brusque obstinacy.

"Madman!" she answered. "Anyhow, you come, Sir Donald."

And she walked lightly away towards the piano, followed by Sir Donald, who walked lightly too, but uncertainly, on his thin, stick-like legs.

"What are you up to, Vi?" said Lord Holme, as she came near to him.

"I'm going to sing something for Sir Donald."

"Capital! Where's Miss Filberte?"

"Here I am!" piped a thin alto voice.

There was a rustle of skirts as the accompanist rose hastily from her chair.

"Sit down, please, Miss Filberte," said Lady Holme in a voice of ice.

Miss Filberte sat down like one who has been knocked on the head with a hammer, and Lady Holme went alone to the piano, turned the button that raised the music-stool, sat down too, holding herself very upright, and played some notes. For a moment, while she played, her face was so determined and pitiless that Mr. Bry, unaware that she was still thinking about Miss Filberte, murmured to Lady Cardington:

"Evidently we are in for a song about Jael with the butter in the lordly dish omitted."

Then an expression of sorrowful youth stole into Lady Holme's eyes, changed her mouth to softness and her cheeks to curving innocence.

She leaned a little way from the piano towards her audience and sang, looking up into vacancy as if her world were hidden there. The song had the clear melancholy and the passion of a Northern night. It brought the stars out within that room and set purple distances before the eyes. Water swayed in it, but languidly, as water sways at night in calm weather, when the black spars of ships at anchor in sheltered harbours are motionless as fingers of skeletons pointing towards the moon.

Mysterious lights lay round a silent shore. And in the wide air, on the wide waters, one woman was singing to herself of a sorrow that was deep as the grave, and that no one upon the earth knew of save she who sang.

The song was very short. It had only two little verses. When it was over, Sir Donald, who had been watching the singer, returned to the sofa, where Robin Pierce was sitting with his eyes shut and, again striking his fingers against the palms of his hands, said: "I have heard that song at night on the Neva, and yet I never heard it before."

People began getting up to go away. It was past eleven o'clock. Sir Donald and Robin Pierce stood together, saying good-bye to Lady Holme.

As she held out her hand to the former, she said:

"Oh, Sir Donald, you know Russia, don't you?"

"I do."

"Then I want you to tell me the name of that stuff they carry down the Neva in boats--the stuff that has such a horrible smell. That song always reminds me of it, and Fritz can't remember the name."

"Nor can I," said Sir Donald, rather abruptly. "Good-night, Lady Holme."

He walked out of the room, followed by Robin.

CHAPTER II

LORD HOLME'S house was in Cadogan Square. When Sir Donald had put on his coat in the hall he turned to Robin Pierce and said:

"Which way do you go?"

"To Half Moon Street," said Robin.

"We might walk, if you like. I am going the same way.

"Certainly."

They set out slowly. It was early in the year. Showers of rain had fallen during the day. The night was warm, and the damp earth in the Square garden steamed as if it were oppressed and were breathing wearily. The sky was dark and cloudy, and the air was impregnated with a scent to which many things had contributed, each yielding a fragment of the odour peculiar to it. Rain, smoke, various trees and plants, the wet paint on a railing, the damp straw laid before the house of an invalid, the hothouse flowers carried by a woman in a passing carriage--these and other things were represented in the heavy atmosphere which was full of the sensation of life. Sir Donald expanded his nostrils.

"London, London!" he said. "I should know it if I were blind."

"Yes. The London smell is not to be confused with the smell of any other place. You have been back a good while, I believe?"

"Three years. I am laid on the London shelf now."

"You have had a long life of work--interesting work."

"Yes. Diplomacy has interesting moments. I have seen many countries. I have been transferred from Copenhagen to Teheran, visited the Sultan of Morocco at Fez, and--" he stopped. After a pause he added: "And now I sit in London clubs and look out of bay windows."

They walked on slowly.

"Have you known our hostess of to-night long?" Sir Donald asked presently.

"A good while--quite a good while. But I'm very much away at Rome now.

Since I have been there she has married."

"I have only met her to speak to once before to-night, though I have seen her about very often and heard her sing."

"Ah!"

"To me she is an enigma," Sir Donald continued with some hesitation. "I cannot make her out at all."

Robin Pierce smiled in the dark and thrust his hands deep down in the pockets of his overcoat.

"I don't know," Sir Donald resumed, after a slight pause, "I don't know what is your--whether you care much for beauty in its innumerable forms.

Many young men don't, I believe."

"I do," said Robin. "My mother is an Italian, you know, and not an Italian Philistine."

"Then you can help me, perhaps. Does Lady Holme care for beauty? But she must. It is impossible that she does not."

"Do you think so? Why?"

"I really cannot reconcile myself to the idea that such performances as hers are matters of chance."

"They are not. Lady Holme is not a woman who chances things before the cruel world in which she, you and I live, Sir Donald."

"Exactly. I felt sure of that. Then we come to calculation of effects, to consideration of that very interesting question--self-consciousness in art."