"Well, I suppose one must stay to the end," he said finally. "One isn't obliged to sit it out, but the audience are requested to keep their seats until the fall of the curtain. Yes, leaving early disturbs the other spectators." While Lady Garnett was being wrapped up with the attention due to her years and dignity, Mary and Eve sat talking in the hall, a square, wainscoted little room, hung with pale grass matting, and decorated brightly with quaint Breton faience and old brass sconces. "I was so glad to see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad for him!" "Almost as bad as too much society." "Yes; it's only another form of dissipation." "I'm not sure that it isn't better to have too much of other people's society than too much of one's own." "I don't think I ever regarded him from a--a society point of view. You know what I mean--like Colonel Lightmark, for instance. When I was a child I always thought of him as a sort of fairy godmother--a person who was always dropping from the clouds to take one for drives in the country, or with a box for the pantomime." Eve laughed at herself, and then sighed. Mary looked at her curiously for a moment, finding something cold, a trace of weariness or disdain in the clear voice and the pretty, childish face. "Philip was always like that, the kindest---- He has always been quite a hero for me--a kind of Colonel Newcome." Then she broke off rather suddenly, finding Eve in turn looking at her inquiringly. "Isn't it curious that we should both have known him so long without knowing each other?" "I suppose it was because we all lived so much abroad. And I don't think Philip talks about his friends very much...." Lady Garnett interrupted the _tete-a-tete_ conversation at this point, and when her little brougham had rolled away, and a few other late guests had left Eve alone with her husband, she sat for a few minutes in the deserted drawing-room, among a wilderness of empty chairs, meditating, with her chin resting on one hand, and her eyes absently contemplating the scattered petals of a copper-coloured rose, which had fallen from some dress or bouquet upon one of the Oriental rugs which partly covered the parquet floor. "Dick," she said presently to her husband, who was leaning against the rails of the veranda, lazily enjoying a final cigarette, "did it ever strike you that Philip Rainham was in love with anybody?" Lightmark turned and gazed at her through the open window wonderingly, almost suspiciously, and then broke into a laugh. "Or that anyone was in love with him?" she pursued gravely. "I don't think I ever noticed it," he answered, with another display of mirth. "What have you discovered now, little matchmaker?" "Not much. I was only thinking.... What a pity Charles wasn't here to-night!"