The house taken furnished by Lyda Pavoya belonged to a woman well known in society, who had gone abroad. Jack Manners had visited there before the war; but the drawing room was changed. There had been banal things in it. Now they were gone. Banality could not exist near Lyda. It seemed that in every form it must shrivel up, burnt away by the still fire of her strange, secret soul.

Jack had pictured himself entering a room full of people, fellow guests, and finding no one, he feared that he had come too soon. If stage stars invited one for midnight, they probably meant one to turn up at half-past twelve, so that, if they sailed in at one o\'clock, one would not be annoyed. When the door opened five minutes after his arrival, therefore, he expected to see some theatrical or social "swell." But it was Lyda who appeared—alone.

He had never met her off the stage until yesterday, at the door of the Phayre house. Then she had been dressed in black, and thickly veiled. He had guessed her identity from the extreme grace and slimness of her tall figure, and the flame of her red hair glimpsed through embroidered net. In Paris, where she had danced, he had sat too far away to criticise her features, and at the theatre to-night he\'d been dazzled by the wonder of her as a swan-woman.

Now, as she drifted in with the air of a tired, overworked girl needing rest, and mutely asking for help in securing it, Jack had the thrill of a new revelation. How many sides had this Polish dancer\'s nature? Was he to have a different sort of thrill each time he met her, always more poignant, more soul-piercing than before?

"I am glad to see you," she said. "I thought I should be here first. I hope I\'ve not kept you waiting?"

"Not five minutes," Jack assured her.

"Good! Will you take off my wrap for me? When I heard you had come I wouldn\'t wait for my maid."

She had unfastened the emerald clasps of a long, oddly shaped cloak of purple velvet lined with clouds of green chiffon over gold.

As Jack lifted it from her white shoulders, to his surprise he heard himself exclaim, "I\'d imagined you in sables." (What right had he to make a "personal" comment like that?)

"So other people have told me," she said. "But I have one peculiarity: I never wear furs. To me it is horrible that women can cover themselves with the skins of lovely creatures murdered for their pleasure: pathetic little faces and feet and tails dangling all over them! No. When I was a child I suffered too much from the cruelty of the strong to the weak to find joy in profiting from it."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Jack. "I\'ve thought sometimes of that sort of thing. But I didn\'t suppose it ever occurred to women, even the tenderest ones I\'ve known."

"The women you have known haven\'t had childhoods like mine," said Lyda. "Yet I hoped you\'d not be one to make fun of my feeling. Another thing: I do not eat meat for the same reason. You will see, at supper. But you shall have some, so don\'t be discouraged!"

As she spoke, she smiled, and Jack realized that it was the first time he had seen her smile. That was strange! Or, it would have been strange in another woman. Now he saw that it would be more strange, altogether out of keeping with this character voluntarily opening itself to him, if she laughed or smiled often.

Jack had obeyed a gesture of hers, and laid the faintly perfumed cloak on a sofa. Lyda wore a dress simple enough for the first dinner-gown of a schoolgirl: grey and short—almost "skimpy," yet somehow perfect, without a single touch of trimming or a jewel. "Shall we go into the dining room?" she asked. "Supper will be ready. It always is. I never have it announced unless I\'ve a party. To-night it\'s only you and me. You\'ll not mind?"

"Mind!" The word spoke itself with a boyish sincerity that Jack could not have pretended. "I didn\'t dare dream——"

She led the way through open sliding doors to an adjoining room, not turning her head to listen as she let Jack push the half-drawn portières aside. What a divine back she had, and what dimples in the delicate, flat shoulder-blades! An almost overpowering desire gripped Jack to kiss the white neck just where a knot of shining red hair was kept in place by a jade pin. He would no more have ventured upon a liberty with this creature of unfathomed reserves than he would have thrown himself into the cage of a tigress. All the same, he had definitely "lost his head." He knew that he would have sacrificed Juliet and Pat for this girl, not deliberately, not through conviction, but because he couldn\'t help himself if it came to a choice!

In the octagon-shaped room where its late mistress had given famous dinners for eight—never less, never more—a small table was laid and lit with shaded candles, but no servants were there. Violets were scattered on the lace table-cover, the only flower decorations. For the guest there were several elaborate cold dishes and champagne in ice; for the hostess, brown bread and a jug of milk! When she saw Jack look at this, Lyda laughed out aloud.

"I never take anything else at night," she explained. "I suppose I\'m a queer person. Probably you\'re thinking me odd in many ways: for one, to have you alone with me at supper. I\'ve a companion who lives with me, Madame Lemercier, a nice woman. But I do what I wish without thinking of conventions, if I hurt no one. People say so many things about me, they can say no worse, whatever I do! That\'s partly why I act as I please. Yet I think I\'d do the same without an excuse. I invited you because I want to talk with you alone; no Madame Lemercier; no servants. I\'ll wait on you myself."

"Not that!" said Manners. "You must let me wait on you!"

"We\'ll wait on each other," she smiled.

A sense of exquisite intimacy with this girl, or woman (he knew not what to call her) took possession of Jack. For a few minutes they ate, and he talked of anything that flashed into his mind. When Lyda had finished her milk he jumped up, and filled the glass again. Then she said abruptly: "I recognized you, at the theatre—from yesterday. Did you think I would?"

"No!" Jack reddened to his sun-bleached hair.

"But—you must have known I was in Claremanagh\'s study when—you were there."

"I—wasn\'t sure."

"Yet you thought so! You\'re not a man who can lie well. And you are the cousin of Claremanagh\'s wife. You thought badly of me."

"I\'d no right to think badly," Jack staved her off. "It wasn\'t my affair!"

"I asked you here to-night to make it your affair."

Jack had a shock of disappointment. That wonderful, heart-piercing first look of hers which he had read, "You are the man: I am the woman!" hadn\'t meant much after all.

"You see," Lyda went on, "I think that perhaps you and I have known each other a long time: in another life: perhaps in more lives than one. Souls that have been friends—or more than friends—group together on earth many times, no doubt. Did you feel this when we met to-night?"

"Yes!" Jack said, his breath choked. "I know it must have been that. I knew even then it was the most wonderful thing ever!"

"I felt it even yesterday, when I passed you at Claremanagh\'s door," she told him. "I thought: \'There\'s a man I may never see again, but we could be friends, and we have been friends, though maybe he has forgotten.\' When I was in the study behind the curtains—Claremanagh put me there: he didn\'t want me seen—I was sorry you should believe things not true."

"I did not!" Jack protested.

"No? Then—I am glad."

The man felt ashamed, remembering suddenly what he had believed yesterday—even to-day. Her words, "I am glad," cut him to the quick, and he hurried on along the way of atonement. "You say you asked me here to \'make it my affair\'—about Claremanagh. Tell me what you want me to do, and I\'ll do it."

"I don\'t know yet what is best. We will talk it over," she answered. "But first you will have to hear a story. It\'s a long story: how I met Claremanagh, and a great many things that came of the meeting. You won\'t be bored?"

"Do you need an answer to that question?"

Lyda gave him one of her rare smiles. "No. It was conventional of me to ask. But—it will not be conventional to tell you the story. It would be—even dangerous to tell it to some men. I\'m not afraid with you."

"Thank you for saying that!"

She held out her hand to him across the small round table. Jack seized it, and pressed it closely instead of kissing the pink palm as he was tempted to do.

For a moment Lyda sat still, her eyes cast down, as if she sought for words which eluded her. Then she began in a low voice that was slightly monotonous, as though she spoke out of an old dream. She paused sometimes; but Manners remained silent, asking no questions. He felt that she would prefer this.

She took him back with her to Petrograd (St. Petersburg then) when she was sixteen, ten years before. She was dancing in a second-rate café, and attracted attention, so that the place became popular. A man named Konrad Markoff was the real owner, though he posed as an amateur patron. By his advice, the manager got Lyda to sign a hard and fast contract to dance at the same salary for the next five years. Markoff pretended a fatherly kindness for her; and she was invited occasionally to visit his wife, a Frenchwoman who had lived for years in England.

One night Markoff brought a good-looking English boy of nineteen or so to the café. This boy applauded Lyda\'s dancing, and was introduced to her at his own request: The Duke of Claremanagh. From the first he was enthusiastic about her talent: not in love ("oh, not at all in love!" Lyda insisted), but anxious to "help a budding genius." At the end of a week he had thought out a practical plan. He would pay for the dancing lessons of which she had dreamed, as of an impossible Paradise: lessons from the great Sophia Verasova. It would cost a lot, yes, but he\'d just had a few unexpected thousands left to him by an aunt. If Lyda wouldn\'t accept, they were sure to be spent on some foolery. She did accept. Perhaps she might have accepted even if Claremanagh hadn\'t made it quite clear how impersonal, how disinterested were his motives!

Never—the dancer confessed—had she met a "good man" in those days. She would have made an idol of this handsome boy; but he didn\'t want her idolatry. He was fancying himself in love with the wife of a Don at Oxford just then!

To free her from slavery at the café, Claremanagh paid a big indemnity; and at the time Lyda was grateful to Markoff for arranging the business, not then aware that he was the power behind the throne. It was nearly two years later when the truth was sprung upon the girl, just as she expected to go with Verasova to make her début in Paris. Markoff had wished her to be educated and become a great dancer without expense to himself. There were several ways in which she could be valuable, and unless she promised her services to him, he would prevent her from leaving Petrograd.

Claremanagh had been too carelessly trustful to have the release from her contract framed in a legal document, and Lyda could still be compelled to carry it out. Unless she agreed to use the charm she had, the fame she might win, in the secret service of Russia, she would be thus compelled!

Lyda was not old enough to understand the hideousness of this bargain. She wasn\'t yet eighteen; and not to go with Verasova would have seemed worse than death. It was only later, when she had soared to brilliant success, that she realized fully what she was expected to do. Engagements were offered to her in the capitals of different countries: after Paris, Rome, and then London. She met many men of distinction, sailors, soldiers, diplomats, financiers. She was to flirt w............