She showed her small white teeth in a smile. "To Etruria," she said solemnly. "It is the country that was old when Rome was young. I went on an exploring expedition. We left Croydon Aerodrome by airplane and stayed overnight in Paris. My fiancé is a French marquis and we stayed at his place in the Avenue Kleber. The next morning we went by special train to Rome. I visited the Coliseum by car and saw the temples and the ruins. I spent another day at the Vatican and St. Peter's and saw the pope. Then we went on to Volsinii and Tarquinii and I found a wonderful old tomb full of glorious Etruscan ware plates and amporas and vases. They must have been worth millions. There we met a magician. He lived in an old, ruined house on the side of the hill. He had a flock of goats and gave us milk. It was magic milk, for suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of an enormous marble city full of beautiful men and women in togas and wonderful robes. The streets were filled with rich chariots drawn by little horses. The chariots shone like gold and were covered with figures of lions and hunters, and trees and scrolls--wonderful! And the gardens! They were beautiful. Flowers of every kind, heliotrope and roses and big, white trumpet lilies and the marble houses were covered with wisteria--oh dear!" "Etruria?" repeated Sault thoughtfully. "Older than Rome? Of course, there must have been--people before the Romans, the sort of ancient Britons of Rome--" Her eyes, fixed on his, were gleaming with merriment. "Of course. I told you about the marvelous trip I had to China? When I was the lovely concubine of Yang-Kuei-Fee? And how the eunuchs strangled me? That was long after Rome, but China was two thousand years old then." "I remember," he said soberly, "you went to China once before then----" His glance fell on the pages of the book and he picked it up, turning its meaningless leaves. "It is all about Etruria," she said. "Evie borrowed it from the store. They have a circulating library at the store. Have you seen Evie?" He shook his head. "Not for weeks," he said, "I am usually in my room when she comes home." Christina Colebrook, invalid and visionary, puckered her smooth brows into a frown. She had emerged from her world of dreams and make-believe and was facing the ugliness of life that eddied about her bed. "Evie is changed quite a lot," she said. "She is quieter and dresses more carefully. Not in the way you would notice, she always had good taste, but especially in the way of underclothes. All girls adore swagger underclothes. They live in dread that one day they will be knocked down by a motor-bus and taken to a hospital wearing a shabby camisole! But Evie--she's collecting all sorts of things. You might think she was getting together a trousseau. Has she ever spoken to you about anybody called 'Ronnie'?" "No--she never speaks to me," said Ambrose. "You know nobody called Ronnie?"