Gervase, who has never been known to be at a loss in any position, however difficult, colors and looks at once annoyed and confused. He stands before Xenia Sabaroff for a few moments hesitating and irresolute, conscious that every one is looking at him; then he takes refuge with Lady Dawlish, whom he detests, because she is the nearest person to him. "Madame Sabaroff is eclipsing the black women," says that lady. "What black women?" asks Gervase, very inattentive and bored. She tells him the story of the Hindoo harem, and he hears no word of it. "Brandolin is always so odd," he says, indifferently, watching the hand of Xenia Sabaroff as it rests on the shoulder of the Babe, who is leaning against her knees gazing at her adoringly. Gervase is angered; irritated, interested, and mortified all at once. He has never been in an absurd position before, and he is aware that he was in one a moment ago, and that the whole house-party of Surrenden Court saw him in it. "What a fool Dolly was not to tell me she was here!" he thinks, forgetting that his cousin and hostess has not the remotest suspicion that he and the Princess Xenia have ever met each other before. "Seven years!" he thinks. "Good heavens! what an eternity! And she is handsomer than she was then; very handsome; wonderfully handsome." He looks at her all the while from under his half-closed eyelids, whilst he talks he knows not what kind of rubbish to Lady Dawlish. Xenia Sabaroff does not once look his way. The moment which she had dreaded has passed, and it has made no impression whatever upon her: her indifference reconciles her to herself. Is it possible, she wonders, that she ever loved, or ever thought that she loved, this man? "Why will you always treat me as a stranger, Madame Sabaroff?" murmurs Gervase to her that night when for a moment he is alone near her, while the cotillion overture commences. "You are a stranger--to me," replies Xenia Sabaroff; and as she speaks she looks full at him. He colors with discomfiture. "Because in the due course of nature I have succeeded to my father's title, you seem to consider that I have changed my whole identity," he says, with great irritation. She is silent; she looks down on the white ostrich-feathers of her fan. He is vaguely encouraged by that silence. "Strangers! That is surely a very cold and cruel word between those who once were friends?" The direct appeal to her makes her look up once more, with great _hauteur_ in the coldness of her face. "Sir, I think when people have forgotten that each other exist, it is as though they had never met. They are perhaps something more distant still than strangers, for to strangers friendship in the future is possible; but those who have been separated by oblivion on the one hand and by contempt on the other are parted as surely and eternally as though death had divided them."