windows; he could dimly see her outline as she passed into the room
beyond, through some heavy curtains. That was why no light came
through to the terrace. He followed, dropping them after him also, and
then he found himself in a room as unlike a hotel as he could
imagine. It may have had the usual brocade walls and gilt chairs of
the "best suite," but its aspect was so transformed by her subtle
taste and presence, it seemed to him unique, and there were masses of
flowers--roses, big white ones--tuberoses--lilies of the valley,
gardenias, late violets. The light were low and shaded, and a great
couch filled one side of the room beyond the fireplace. Such a couch!
covered with a tiger-skin and piled with pillows, all shades of rich
purple velvet and silk, embroidered with silver and gold--unlike any
pillows he had ever seen before, even to their shapes. The whole thing
was different and strange--and intoxicating.

The lady had reached the couch, and sank into it. She was in black
still, but gauzy, clinging black, which seemed to give some gleam of
purple underneath. And if he had not been sure that in daylight he had
thought they were green, he would have sworn the eyes which now looked
into his were deepest violet, too.

"Come," she said. "You may sit here beside me and tell me what you
think."

And her voice was like rich music--but she had hardly any accent. She
might have been an Englishwoman almost, for that matter, and yet he
somehow knew that she was not. Perhaps it was she pronounced each
word; nothing was slurred over. Without her hat she looked even more
attractive, and certainly younger. But what was age or youth? And what
was beauty itself, when a woman whose face was neither young nor