"What are you goin' to sing?"

"Oh--"

She was about to say something impatient about his not knowing one tune from another, but she checked herself, and answered quietly:

"An Italian song and a French song."

"What about?"

"Take care of that carriage in front--love."

He looked at her sideways.

"You're the one to sing about that," he said.

She felt that he was admiring her beauty as if it were new to him. She did not care.

At last they reached Manchester House. Fritz's place was taken by his chauffeur, and they got out. The crowd was enormous. Many people recognised Lady Holme and greeted her. Others, who did not know her personally, looked at her with open curiosity. A powdered footman came to show her to the improvised artists' room. Fritz prepared to follow.

"Aren't you going into the concert-room?" she said.

"Presently."

"But--"

"I'll take you up first."

"Very well," she said. "But it isn't the least necessary."

He only stuck out his under jaw. She realised that Miss Schley would be in the artists' room and said nothing more. They made their way very slowly to the great landing on the first floor of the house, from which a maze of reception rooms opened. Mr. and Mrs. Ongrin, the immensely rich Australians who were the owners of the house, were standing there ready to receive the two Royal Princesses who were expected, and Mr.

Ongrin took from a basket on a table beside him a great bouquet of honey-coloured roses, and offered it to Lady Holme with a hearty word of thanks to her for singing.

She took the roses with a look of pleasure.

"How sweet of you! They suit my song," she said.

She was thinking of the Italian song.

Mr. Ongrin, who was a large, loose-limbed man, with straw-coloured hair turning grey, and a broken nose, looked genial and confused, and she went on, still closely followed by Fritz.

"This is the room for the performers, my lady," said the footman, showing them into a large, green drawing-room, with folding doors at one end shut off by an immense screen.

"Is the platform behind the screen?" Lady Holme asked.

"Yes, my lady. The ladies' cloak-room is on the left--that door, my lady."

There were already several people in the room, standing about and looking tentative. Lady Holme knew most of them. One was a French actor who was going to give a monologue; very short, very stout, very intelligent-looking, with a face that seemed almost too flexible to be human. Two or three were singers from the Opera House. Another was an aristocratic amateur, an intimate friend of Lady Holme's, who had a beautiful contralto voice. Several of the committee were there too, making themselves agreeable to the artists. Lady Holme began to speak to the French actor. Fritz stood by. He scarcely understood a word of French, and always looked rather contemptuous when it was talked in his presence. The French actor appealed to him on some point in the conversation. He straddled his legs, uttered a loud, "Oh, wee! Oh, wee!

wee!" and laughed.

"Lord Holme est tout a fait de mon avis!" cried the comedian.

"Evidemment," she answered, wishing Fritz would go. Miss Schley had not come yet. She was certain to be effectively late, as she had been at Mrs. Wolfstein's lunch-party. Lady Holme did not feel as if she cared whether she came early or late, whether she were there or not. She was still companioned by her curious sensation of the morning, a sensation of odd loneliness and detachment, combined with excitement--but an excitement which had nothing to do with the present. It seemed to her as if she were a person leaning out of a window and looking eagerly along a road. People were in the room behind her, voices were speaking, things were happening there, but they had nothing to do with her. That which had to do with her was coming down the road. She could not see yet what it was, but she could hear the faint sound of its approach.

The comedian spoke to someone else. She went into the cloak-room and took off her motor cloak. As she glanced into a mirror to see if all the details of her gown were perfect, she was struck by the expression on her face, as if she had seen it on the face of a stranger. For a moment she looked at herself as at a stranger, seeing her beauty with a curious detachment, and admiring it without personal vanity or egoism, or any small, triumphant feeling. Yet it was not her beauty which fascinated her eyes, but an imaginative look in them and in the whole face. For the first time she fully realised why she had a curious, an evocative, influence on certain people, why she called the hidden children of the secret places of their souls, why those children heard, and stretched out their hands, and lifted their eyes and opened their lips.

There was a summoning, and yet a distant expression in her eyes. She saw it herself. They were like eyes that had looked on magic, that would look on magic again.

A maid came to help her. In a moment she had picked up her bouquet of roses and her music-case, and was back in the green drawing-room.

There were more people in it now. Fritz was still hovering about looking remarkably out of place and strangely ill at ease. To-day his usual imperturbable self-confidence had certainly deserted him. He spoke to people but his eyes were on the door. Lady Holme knew that he was waiting for Miss Schley. She felt a sort of vague pity for his uneasiness. It was time for the concert to begin, but the Princesses had not yet arrived. A murmur of many voices came from the hidden room beyond the screen where the audience was assembled. Several of the performers began to look rather strung up. They smiled and talked with slightly more vivacity than was quite natural in them. One or two of the singers glanced over their songs, and pointed out certain effects they meant to make to the principal accompanist, an abnormally thin boy with thick dark hair and flushed cheeks. He expressed comprehension, emphasising it by finger-taps on the music and a continual, "I see!

I see!" Two or three of the members of the committee looked at their watches, and the murmur of conversation in the hidden concert-room rose into a dull roar.

Lady Holme sat down on a sofa. Sometimes when she was going to sing she felt nervous. There are very few really accomplished artists who do not. But to-day she was not at all nervous. She knew she was going to do well--as well as when she sang to Lady Cardington, even better. She felt almost as if she were made of music, as if music were part of her, ran in her veins like blood, shone in her eyes like light, beat in her heart like the pulse of life. But she felt also as if she were still at a window, looking down a road, and listening to the sound of an approach.

"Did you see him?"

A lady near her was speaking to a friend.

"Yes. Doesn't he look shocking? Such an alteration!"

"Poor fellow! I wonder he cares to go about."

"And he's so clever. He helped me in a concert once--the Gordon boys, you know--and I assure you--"

She did not catch anything more, but she felt a conviction that they were speaking of Rupert Carey, and that he must be in the concert-room.

Poor Carey! She thought of the Arkell House ball, but only for a moment.

Then someone spoke to her. A moment later Miss Schley came slowly into the room, accompanied by a very small, wiry-looking old woman, dreadfully dressed, and by Leo Ulford, who was carrying a bouquet of red carnations. The kind care of Mr. Ongrin had provided a bouquet for each lady who was performing.

As Leo came in he looked round swiftly, furtively. He saw Fritz, and a flush went over his face. Then Lady Holme saw him look at her with a scowl, exactly like the scowl of an evil-tempered schoolboy. She bowed to him slightly. He ignored the recognition, and spoke to Miss Schley with a heavy assumption of ignominious devotion and intimacy. Lady Holme could scarcely help smiling. She read the little story very plainly--the little common story of Leo's desire to take a revenge for his thrashing fitting in with some similar desire of Miss Schley's; on her part probably a wish to punish Fritz for having ventured to say something about her impudent mimicry of his wife. Easy to read it was, common-minded, common-hearted humanity in full sail to petty triumph, petty revenge. But all this was taking place in the room behind Lady Holme, and she was leaning from the window watching the white road. But Fritz? She glanced round the drawing-room and saw that he was moved by the story as they had meant him to be moved. The angry jealousy of the primitive, sensual man was aflame, His possessive sense, one of the strongest, if not the strongest, of such a man's senses, was outraged.

And he showed it.

He was standing with a middle-aged lady, one of the committee, but he had ceased from talking to her, and was staring at Miss Schley and Leo with the peculiar inflated look on his face that was characteristic of him when his passions were fully roused. Every feature seemed to swell and become bloated, as if under the influence of a disease or physical seizure. The middle-aged lady looked at him with obvious astonishment, then turned away and spoke to the French actor.

Miss Schley moved slowly into the middle of the room. She did not seem to see Fritz. Two or three people came to speak to her. She smiled but did not say much. The little wiry-looking old lady, her mother from Susanville, stood by her in an effaced manner, and Leo, holding the bouquet, remained close beside her, standing over her in his impudent fashion like a privileged guardian and lover.

Lady Holme was watching Fritz. The necessary suppression of his anger at such a moment, and in such surroundings, suppression of any demonstration of it at least, was evidently torturing him. Someone--a man--spoke to him. His wife saw that he seemed to choke something down before he could get out a word in reply. Directly he had answered he moved away from the man towards Miss Schley, but he did not go up to her. He did not trust himself to do that. He stood still again, staring.

Leo bent protectively over the American. She smiled at him demurely beneath lowered eyelids. The little old lady shook out her rusty black dress and assumed an absurd air of social sprightliness, making a mouth bunched up like an old-fashioned purse sharply drawn together by a string.

There was a sudden lull in the roar of conversation from the concert-room, succeeded by a wide rustling noise. The Princesses had at length arrived, and the audience was standing up as they came in and took their seats. After a brief silence the rustling noise was renewed as the audience sat down again. Then the pianist hurried up to a grave-looking girl who was tenderly holding a violin, took her hand and led her away behind the screen. A moment later the opening bars of a duet were audible.

The people in the artists' room began to sit down with a slight air of resignation. The French actor looked at the very pointed toes of his varnished boots and composed his india-rubber features into a solemn, almost priestly, expression. Lady Holme went over to a sofa near the screen and listened attentively to the duet, but from time to time she glanced towards the middle of the room where Miss Schley was still calmly standing up with Leo holding the bouquet. The mother from Susanville had subsided on a small chair with gilt legs, spread out her meagre gown, and assumed the aspect of a roosting bird at twilight.

Fritz stood up with his back against the wall, staring at Miss Schley.

His face still looked bloated. Presently Miss Schley glanced at him, as if by accident, looked surprised at seeing him there, and nodded demurely. He made a movement forward from the wall, but she immediately began to whisper to Leo Ulford, and after remaining for a moment in an attitude of angry hesitation he moved backward again. His face flushed scarlet.

Lady Holme realised that he was making a fool of himself. She saw several pairs of eyes turned towards him, slight smiles appearing on several faces. The French actor had begun to watch him with an expression of close criticism, as a stage manager watches an actor at rehearsal. But she did not feel as if she cared what Fritz was doing.

The sound of the violin had emphasised her odd sensation of having nothing to do with what was going on in the room. Just for one hour Fritz's conduct could not affect her.

Very soon people began to whisper round her. Artists find it very difficult to listen to other artists on these occasions. In a minute or two almost everybody was speaking with an air of mystery. Miss Schley put her lips to Leo Ulford's ear. Evidently she had a great deal to say to him. He began to pout his lips in smiles. They both looked across at Lord Holme. Then Miss Schley went on murmuring words into Leo's ear and Leo began to shake with silent laughter. Lord Holme clenched his hands at his sides. The French actor, still watching him closely, put up a fat forefinger and meditatively traced the outline of his own profile, pushing out his large flexible lips when the finger was drawing near to them. The whole room was full of the tickling noise of half-whispered conversation.