So she emptied the room and furnished it afresh, and Mrs. Craven's heart warmed as she saw the girl's natural craving for a home express itself in chairs and pictures, in pretty wall hangings and dainty carpets, in graceful flower-bowls, and all those little touches of domesticity which are the mysterious outcome of sex. There was, it turned out, a small box-room alongside, which was never used, and which could be linked up by a door knocked through the wall. This could be the secretary's room, and hold the letter files, and the copying press, and the typewriter, and all the other crude machinery of commerce; and so "Miss Kate's room," as it came to be called, fulfilled in appearance little enough of its original intention of office. One can hardly associate walls panelled in rose-pink brocade with the much-abused art of company promotion. But Kate sat in that pretty room, and thought out there all those tremendous schemes, which brought her such brilliant success. She felt she had retired from the firing line; she schemed and planned in secure cover outside the battle; and when any idea eluded her for too long she went out and drove her motor car, or played golf, till the idea arrived. In the season she sometimes went away on butterfly-hunting trips. At the same time she had great ideas of buying an estate where she could have a private golf course of her own. She had grown so strangely sensitive to stares these days, and, people said, unsociable. Her engagement to Mr. Austin had been broken off long ago, and to tell the truth Austin was well enough pleased to be rid of her. Africa, he felt, had eliminated from her all the points which beforetime had caught his admiration. And then again she was so enormously rich one could not, he told himself, marry a woman with such an unwieldy amount of riches. At least he could not. Nor did he intend that the future Mrs. Austin, if ever there was one, should have more practice in high finance than was necessary to manage her own accounts and the household weekly bills. In fact, it was over this question that he flattered himself had come their split. She had given him, to be sure, a pretty broad hint that day on the landing stage, but the actual rupture of their engagement had not come till a week later, and Kate was clever enough to make Mr. Austin think that the idea was his and his alone. Still they had parted on excellent terms, and any service, professional or otherwise, that Austin could render her in the future was one that he should look forward to, as he promised, most keenly. "Though you cannot see your way to be my husband," she had said to him lightly, "you will still upon occasion act as my solicitor?" "Let's call it 'friend,' Kate," he had answered, and they parted on that.