stay--'"

She stopped and held her fan a little higher.

"I don't know it," he said.

"It always makes me feel that the man or woman who has never had the
wild heart has never been truly and intensely human. But one must know
when to stop, when to let the wild heart pass away."

"But if the heart wants to remain?"

"Then you must dominate it. Nothing is more pitiable, nothing is more
disgusting, even, than wildness in old age. I have a horror of that.
And I am certain that nothing else can affect youth so painfully. Old
wildness--that must give youth nausea of the soul."

She spoke with a thrill of energy which penetrated Craven in a peculiar
and fascinating way. He felt almost as if she sent a vital fluid through
his veins.

Suddenly he thought of the "old guard," and he knew that not one of the
truly marvellous women who belonged to it could hold him or charm him as
this white-haired woman, with the frankly old face, could and did.

"After all," he thought, "it isn't the envelope that matters; it is the
letter inside."

Deeply he believed that just then. He was, indeed, under a sort of
spell for the moment. Could the spell be lasting? He looked at Lady