a figure for romance. But she did care. It was, perhaps, that she saw in
him the fundamental things which belonged to both of them, and which did
not belong to Elise.

As the days went on I was sorry for Elise. I should never have believed
that I could be sorry, but I was. Jimmie was always punctiliously polite
to her. But he was only that.

"She's getting what she deserves," Duncan said, but I felt that she was,
perhaps, getting more than she deserved. For, after all, it was she who
had kept Jimmie at it, and it was her keeping him at it which had
brought success.

Neither Duncan nor I could tell how Jimmie felt about Ursula. But the
thought of her troubled my sleep. Stripped of her art, she was not in
the least the heroine of Jimmie's play. She was of coarser clay,
commoner. And Jimmie was fine. The fear I had was that he might clothe
her with the virtues which he had created, and the thought, as I have
said, troubled me.

At last Duncan and I had to go home, although we promised to return for
the opening night. Ursula gave a farewell supper for us. She lived alone
with a housekeeper and maid. Her apartment was furnished in good taste,
with, perhaps, a touch of over-emphasis. The table had unshaded purple
candles and heather in glass dishes. Ursula wore woodland green, with a
chaplet of heather about her glorious hair. Elise was in white with
pearls. She was thirty-five, but she did not look it. Ursula was older,
but she would always be in a sense ageless, as such women are--one would
thrill to Sara Bernhardt were she seventeen or seventy.