"Oh, it's only that he gave me a new idea. I want to work it out. So you see, no one thing ought to spoil everything else. Of course we're none of us likely to expect beds of roses, we've learned our lesson. But when there are so many chances, it is wise and right to take the life that offers the most--the most chances of doing, and being." Una's hair was finished by this time, and she stood up in her long white dressing-gown, leaning her hand on the toilet-table, and looking at her sister with searching eyes. "Amethyst," she said, "I don't believe you were ever really in love with Lucian Leigh at all." The colour flamed into Amethyst's face, and her bosom heaved. "Yes, I was," she said, "but that's just what I want to show you. That's over, but one isn't all heart, any more than I hope and believe one is all face. One has a mind, and a soul, and possibilities. I won't go to the bottom, if I was shipwrecked once. Nothing can ever take up the whole of one, I suppose. I thought it could then. Now if I don't get ready quick, I shall be late." She ran away as she spoke. It was not her way to neglect the necessity of the moment, and she made such good speed, that she was in the drawing-room before any of the guests arrived. On the table lay a thin square book bound in bluish-green, with a silver iris in the corner. "Sylvester Riddell's poem, my dear," said Lady Haredale. "I bought it when I was out with the children. He'll like to see it on the table. Look at it, then you can talk to him about it." Amethyst took it up, and glanced over the pages. She was a rapid reader, and in a very few minutes, she caught the idea of the poem, the passionate search for an ideal, and it attracted her. Did it contradict the philosophy which she had been preaching to Una, or was it in truth its justification? The look of interest was still on her face, the book in her hand, when its author was announced, and, when she put it down and greeted him with a delightful smile, as of one caught in the act, Sylvester felt that all the reviews in London might cut `Iris' to pieces. She had had her day. He sat by Amethyst at dinner, and neither prince nor millionaire was there to claim her attention. She appeared neither cold nor resentful, and that she was somewhat excited, he did not guess. Her lovely eyes, with their mysterious depths, were turned upon him, and she referred to his poem with a certain modest deference, as if in explaining it, he did her an honour. Sylvester had never known before, how utterly he had failed to express his hero's rapture, when Iris shone upon him with no cloud between. "It is no new subject," he said, modestly, "but the idea possessed me--"