LADY GLEESON had heard from a Promethean what had transpired in the studio after she had left, and her interest was immensely stimulated. These details she had not known when she had driven her hero home, and had felt so strangely drawn to him that she had kissed him in front of Dr. Fillery as though she caressed a prisoner under the eyes of the warder.

She made her little plans accordingly. It was some days, however, before they bore fruit. The telephone at last rang. It was Dr. Fillery. The nerves in her quivered with anticipation.

Devonham, it appeared, had been away, and her “kind letters and presents,” he regretted to find, had remained unanswered and unacknowledged. Mr. LeVallon had been in the country, too, with his colleague, and letters had not been forwarded. Oh, it would “do him good to see people.” It would be delightful if she could spare a moment to looR in. Perhaps for a cup of tea tomorrow? No, tomorrow she was engaged. The next day then. The next day it was. In the morning arrived a brief letter from Mr. Le–Vallon himself: “You will come to tea tomorrow. I thank you. JULIAN LEVALLON.”

Yet there was something both in Dr. Fillery’s voice, as in this enigmatic letter, that she did not like. She felt puzzled somewhere. The excitement of a novel intrigue with this unusual youth, none the less, was stimulating. She decided to go to tea. She put off a couple of engagements in order to be free.

A servant let her in. She went upstairs. There was no sign of Dr. Fillery nor, thank heaven, of Devonham either. Tea, she saw, was laid for two in the private sitting-room. LeVallon, seated in an arm-chair by the open window, looked “magnificent and overpowering,” as she called it. He rose at once to greet her. “Thank you,” he said in his great voice. “I am glad to see you.” He said it perfectly, as though it had been taught him. He took her hand. Her ravishing smile, perhaps, he did not notice. His face, at any rate, was grave.

His height, his broad shoulders, his inexperienced eyes and manner again delighted Lady Gleeson.

The effect upon her receptive temperament, at any rate, was instantaneous. That he showed no cordiality, did not smile, and that his manner was constrained, meant nothing to her or meant what she wished it to mean. He was somewhat overcome, of course, she reflected, that she was here at all. She began at once. Sitting composedly on the edge of the table, so that her pretty silk stockings were visible to the extent she thought just right, she dangled her slim legs and looked him straight in the eyes. She was full of confidence. Her attitude said plainly: “I’m taking a lot of trouble, but you’re worth it.”

“Mr. LeVallon,” she purred in a teasing yet determined voice, “why do you ignore me?” There was an air of finality about the words. She meant to know.

LeVallon met her eyes with a look of puzzled surprise, but did not answer. He stood in front of her. He looked really magnificent, a perfect study of the athlete in repose. He might have been a fine Greek statue.

“Why,” she repeated, her lip quivering slightly, “do you ignore me? I want the truth,” she added. She was delighted to see how taken aback he was. “You don’t dislike me.” It was not a question.

Into his eyes stole an expression she could not exactly fathom. She judged, however, that he felt awkward, foolish. Her interest doubtless robbed him of any savoir faire he might possess. This talk face to face was a little too much for any young man, but for a simple country youth it was, of course, more than disconcerting.

“I’m Lady Gleeson,” she informed him, smiling precisely in the way she knew had troubled so many other men. “Angela,” she added softly. “You’ve had my books and flowers and letters. Yet you continue to ignore me. Why, please?” With a different smile and a pathetic, childish, voice: “Have I offended you somehow? Do I displease you?”

LeVallon stared at her as though he was not quite certain who she actually was, yet as though he ought to know, and that her words now reminded him. He stared at her with what she called his “awkward and confused” expression, but which Fillery, had he been present, would have recognized as due to his desire to help a pitiful and hungry creature that, in a word, his instinct for service had been a little stirred.

The scene was certainly curious and unusual.

LeVallon, with his great strength and dignity, yet something tender, pathetic in his bearing, stood staring at her. Lady Gleeson, brimming with a sense of easy victory, sat on the table-edge, her pretty legs well forward, knowing herself divinely gowned. She had her victim, surely, at a disadvantage. She felt at the same time a faint uneasiness she could not understand. She concealed it, however.

“I suffer here,” he said suddenly in a quiet tone.

She gave a start. It was the phrase he had used before. She thrilled. She hitched her skirt a fraction higher.

“Julian, poor boy,” she said then stared at him. “How innocent you are!” She said it with apparent impulse, though her little frenzied mind was busy calculating. There came a pause. He said nothing. He was, apparently, quite innocent, extraordinarily, exasperatingly innocent.

In a low voice, smiling shyly, she added as though it cost her a great effort

“You do not recognize what is yours.”

“You are sacred!” he replied with startling directness, as though he suddenly understood, yet was stupidly perplexed. “You already have your man.”

Lady Gleeson gulped down a spasm of laughter. How slow these countrymen could be! Yet she must not shock him. He was suffering, besides. This yokel from the woods and mountains needed a little coaxing. It was natural enough. She must explain and teach, it seemed. Well he was worth the trouble. His beauty was mastering her already. She loved, in particular, his innocence, his shyness, his obvious respect. She almost felt herself a magnanimous woman.

“My man!” she mentioned. “Oh, he’s finished with me long ago. He’s bored. He has gone elsewhere. I am alone” she added with an impromptu inspiration “and free to choose.”

“It must be pain and loneliness to you.”

LeVallon looked, she thought, embarrassed. He was struggling with himself, of course. She left the table and came up close to him. She stood on tiptoe, so that her breath might touch his face. Her eyes shone with fire. Her voice trembled a little. It was very low.

“I choose you,” she whispered. She cast down her shining eyes. Her lips took on a prim, inviting turn. She knew she was irresistible like that. She stood back a step, as if expecting some tumultuous onslaught. She waited.

But the onslaught did not come. LeVallon, towering above her, merely stared. His arms hung motionless. There was, indeed, expression in his face, but it was not the expression that she expected, longed for, deemed her due. It puzzled her, as something entirely new.

“Me!” he repeated, in an even tone. He gazed at her in a peculiar way. Was it appraisement? Was it halting wonder at his marvellous good fortune? Was it that he hesitated, judging her? He seemed, she thought once for an instant, curiously indifferent. Something in his voice startled her.

The moment’s pause, at any rate, was afflicting. Her spirit burned within her. Only her supreme belief in herself prevented a premature explosion. Yet something troubled her as well. A tremor ran through her. LeVallon, she remembered, was LeVallon.

His own thought and feeling lay hidden from her blunt perception since she read no signs unless they were painfully obvious. But in his mind in his feeling, rather, since he did not think ran evidently the sudden knowledge of what her meaning was. He understood. But also, perhaps he remembered what Fillery had told him.

For a long time he kept silent, the emotions in him apparently at grips. Was he suddenly going to carry her away as he had done to that “little Russian poseuse”? She watched him. He was intensely busy with what occupied his mind, for though he did not speak, his lips were moving. She watched him, impatience and wonder in her, impatience at his slowness, wonder as to what he would do and say when at last his simple mind had decided. And again the odd touch of fear stole over her. Something warned her. This young man thrilled her, but he certainly was strange. This was, indeed, a new experience. Whatever was he thinking about? What in the world was he going to say? His lips were still moving. There was a light in his face. She imagined the very words, could almost read them, hear them. There! Then she heard them, heard some at any rate distinctly: “You are an animal. Yet you walk up-right....”

The scene that followed went like lightning.

Before Lady Gleeson could move or speak, however, he also said another thing that for one pulsing second, and for the first time in her life, made her own utter worthlessness become appallingly clear to her. It explained the touch of fear. Even her one true thing, her animal passion, was a trumpery affair:

“There is nothing in you I can work with,” he said with gentle, pitying sympathy. “Nothing I can use.”

Then Lady Gleeson blazed. Vanity instantly restored self-confidence. It seemed impossible to believe her ears.

What had he done? What had he said that caused the explosion? He watched her abrupt, spasmodic movements with amazemnt. They were so ugly, so unrhythmical. Their violence was so wasteful.

“You insult me!” she cried, making these violent movements of her whole body that, to him, were unintelligible. “How dare you? You “ The breath choked her.

“Cad,” he helped her, so suddenly that another mind not far away might almost have dropped the word purposely into his own. “I am so pained,” he added, “so pained.” He gazed at her as though he longed to help. “For you, I know, are valuable to him who holds you sacred to your husband.”

Lady Gleeson simply could not credit her ears. This neat, though unintentional, way of transferring the epithet to her who deserved it, left her speechless. Her fury increased with her inability to express it. She could have struck him, killed him on the spot. Her face changed from white to crimson like some toy with a trick of light inside it. She seemed to emit sparks. She was transfixed. And the shiver that ran through her was, perhaps, for once, both sexual and spiritual at once.

“You insult me,” she cried again helplessly. “You insult me!”

“If there was something in you I could work with help “ he began, his face showing a tender sympathy that enraged her even more. He started suddenly, looking closer into her blazing eyes. “Ah,” he said quickly below his breath, “the fire the little fire!” His expression altered. But Lady Gleeson, full of her grievance, did not catch the words, it seemed.

“In my tenderest, my most womanly feelings,” she choked on, yet noticing the altered expression on his face. “How dare you?” Her voice became shrill and staccato. Then suddenly mistaking the look in his eyes for shame she added: “You shall apologize. You shall apologize at once!” She screamed the words. They were the only ones that her outraged feelings found.

“You show yourself, my fire,” he was saying softly in his deep resonant voice. “Oh, I see and worship now; I understand a little.”

His look astonished her even in the middle of her anger the pity, kindness, gentleness in it. The bewilderment she did not notice. It was the evident desire to be of service to her, to help and comfort, that infuriated her. The superiority was more than she could stand.

“And on your knees,” she yelped; “on your knees, too!”

Drawing herself up, she pointed to the carpet with an air of some tragedy queen to whom a lost self-respect came slowly back. “Down there!” she added, as the gleaming buckle on her shoe indicated the spot. She did not forget to show her pretty stockings as well.

The picture was comic in the extreme, yet with a pathetic twist about it that, had she possessed a single grain of humour, must have made her feel foolish and shamed until she died, for his kneeling position rend............