A new spring moon looked into the room from the west where like elegant and graceful phantoms the dancers moved, swayed, glided, swung back again with sinuous grace into the suavely delicate courtship of the dance. The slender feet and swaying figure of Athalie seemed presently to bewitch the other couple, for they drew aside and stood together watching that exquisite incarnation of youth itself, gliding, bending, floating in the lilac-scented, lilac-tinted dusk under the young moon. The machine ran down in the course of time, and Hargrave went over to re-wind it, but Peggy Brooks waved him aside and seated herself at the piano, saying she had enough of Hargrave. She was still playing the quaint, sweet dance called "The Orchid," and Hargrave was leaning on the piano beside her watching Cecil and Athalie drifting through the dusk to the music's rhythm, when the door opened and somebody came in. Athalie, in Cecil's arms, turned her head, looking back over her shoulder. Dane loomed tall in the twilight. "Oh!" she exclaimed; "I am so glad!"--slipping out of Cecil's arms and wheeling on Dane, both hands outstretched. The others came up, also, with quick, gay greetings, and after a moment or two of general and animated chatter Athalie drew Dane into a corner and made room for him beside her on the sofa. Peggy had turned on the music machine again and, snubbing Hargrave, was already beginning the Miraflores with Cecil Reeve. Athalie said: "_Are_ you well? That's the first question." He said he was well. "And did you find your lost city?" He said, quietly: "We found Yhdunez." "We?" "I and my white companion." "Why didn't you bring him with you this evening?" she asked. "Did you tell him I invited him?" "Yes." "Oh.... Couldn't he come?" And, as he made no answer: "Couldn't he?" she repeated. "Who is he, anyway--" "Clive Bailey." She sat motionless, looking at him, the question still parting her lips. Dully in her ears the music sounded. The pallor which had stricken her face faded, grew again, then waned in the faint return of colour. Dane, who was looking away from her rather fixedly, spoke first, still not looking at her: "Yes," he said in even, agreeable tones, "Clive was my white companion.... I gave him your note to read.... He did not seem to think that he ought to come." "Why?" Her lips scarcely formed the word. "--As long as you were not aware of whom you were inviting.... There had been some misunderstanding between you and him--or so I gathered--from his attitude." A few moments more of silence; then she was fairly prepared. "Is he well?" she asked coolly. "Yes. He had one of those nameless fevers, down there. He's coming out of it all right." "Is he--his appearance--changed?" "He's changed a lot, judging from the photographs he showed me taken three or four years ago. He's changed in other ways, too, I fancy." "How?"