"I have done for some one (even for you, perhaps) what I have never done for myself;" she was smiling. "I will tell you a story. There was once a man who loved me. He was born with everything--a marvellous name, great riches, beauty, a magnetic quality that I have never seen equalled. I always reproached him with having added nothing to his inheritance--no glory--no achievement--'I have spent,' he would say, shrugging his shoulders. 'Wasted,' I retorted tartly. 'If you like. I have never admitted my past or my future as barriers--or even frontiers--to my actions. I have lived without forethought or arriere pensee--without the weakness of regrets or the stinginess of precautions,' and then he turned to me--his eyes were half shut and his voice was muffled as if a flood were battering on the door of his dispassionateness, 'I have had everything in life except you,' he said. I smiled at him, a little sadly, a little cynically. 'It is I who have given you the greatest gift,' I said. 'I have given you a regret and an illusion. Vous avez donc tout eu.' That night he killed himself." "And you, Paula, did you feel a murderess?" "No, a saviour." * * * * * She was dressed in pale lilac--the coolest lilac in the world. It rippled round her like loving caressing waves. "What is your dress called, Paula?" "Oasis," she said. "'Indian summer' would have been a better name." "Tell me about it." "Why do you always want to know?" "I am writing a book." "Tant pis." She was out of temper. The flowers arrived. Old-fashioned pink roses, coral carnations, purple stocks, pink pinks, mauve orchids, moss roses, patterned chintz-like phlox. "Oh!" she said, and for a moment she shut her eyes. Then: "Tell me about her," she said. "Marthe?" "Is that her name?" "She is vibrant." "But of course. What does she look like?" "Her hair is like a dirty new coin. You feel that you could polish it into brightness. Her eyes are like tea--yellow camomile tea. Her mouth is big and rather grave. There are electric waves of aliveness running all through her." "I do not like her." "No?" "No." "Why not?" "All that irrelevant, interfering vitality. It is dangerous." "And slumbering, mysterious magnetism, is that not dangerous?" "That, too." There was a thunderstorm and the air got cool. Madame Marly had a headache and dined in her room. * * * * * The next day was grey--grey air, a grey sky, a grey countryside, a grey sea--not luminous, lustrous grey, but opaque chiffon drawn across the world. Paula's flowers had arrived--lemon-coloured hollyhocks, blue and mauve and purple delphiniums, filmy love-in-the-mist, primrose antirrhinums, snowy Madonna lilies with golden middles, huge creamy roses, tiny yellow rosebuds, straggling larkspurs.