and attractive-looking young woman. Her cheeks were a little pale;
her hair - perfectly natural - was a wonderful deep shade of soft
brown. Her eyes were long and narrow - almost Oriental in shape
- and they seemed in some queer way to match the room; he could
have sworn that in the firelight they flashed green. Her body and
limbs, notwithstanding her extreme slightness, were graceful, perhaps,
but with the grace of the tigress. She wore a green silk dressing
jacket, pulled together with a belt of lizard skin, and her neck was
bare. Her skirt was of some thin black material. She was obviously
in deshabille, and yet there was something neat and trim about the
smaller details of her toilette.

"Go on, please, Peter," she begged. "You are keeping me in suspense."

"There isn't much to tell," he answered. "It's over - that's all."

She drew a sharp breath through her teeth.

"You are not going to marry that girl - that bourgeois doll in
Streatham?"

Fitzgerald sat up in his chair.

"Look here," he said, seriously, "don't you call her names. If I'm
not going to marry her, it isn't my fault. She is the only girl I
have ever wanted, and probably - most probably - she will be the only
one I ever shall want. That's honest, isn't it?"

The girl winced.