At the back of the studio there sat another woman, so engloomed that no
detail of her could be distinguished.

"As I was saying," the tall upright woman resumed as soon as Miss Ingate
and Audrey had been introduced. "Betty Burke is in prison. She got six
weeks this morning. She may never come out again. Almost her last words
from the dock were that you, Miss Nickall, should be asked to go to London
to look after Mrs. Burke, and perhaps to take Betty's place in other ways.
She said that her mother preferred you to anybody else, and that she was
sure you would come. Shall you?"

The accents were very clear, the face was delicately smiling, the little
gestures had a quite tranquil quality. Rosamund did not seem to care
whether Miss Nickall obeyed the summons or not. She did not seem to care
about anything whatever except her own manner of existing. She was the
centre of Paris, and Paris was naught but a circumference for her. All
phenomena beyond the individuality of the woman were reduced to the
irrelevant and the negligible. It would have been absurd to mention to her
costume balls. The frost of her indifference would have wilted them into
nothingness.

"Yes, of course, I shall go," Nick answered.

"When?" was the implacable question.

"Oh! By the first train," said Nick eagerly. As she approached the lamp,
the gleam of the devotee could be seen in her gaze. In one moment she had
sacrificed Paris and art and Tommy and herself, and had risen to the sacred
ardour of a vocation. Rosamund was well accustomed to watching the process,