She met him as she always met him, with the faint enigmatical smile, with the touch of gentle respect never absent from her manner to him, except for one moment last night. He needed it. He had fallen in his own estimation during that sleepless night. He saw the sudden impulse that had goaded him into an offer of marriage--the kind of offer that how many men make in good faith--in its native brutality--as he knew she had seen it. When he first perceived her in the dimly-lighted room, and he was aware of her presence before he saw her, he felt he could not go towards her, as a man may feel that he cannot go home. Home for Stephen was wherever Anne was, even if the door were barred against him. But after a few minutes he screwed his "courage to the sticking-place," and went up to her. "I am to take you in to dinner," he said. "It is your misfortune, but not my fault." "I am glad," she said. "I came to you last night because I had something urgent to say to you. I shall have an opportunity of saying it now." The constraint and awkwardness he had of late felt in her presence fell from him. It seemed as if they had gone back by some welcome short cut to the simple intercourse of the halcyon days when they had first met. He cursed himself for his mole-like obtuseness in having thought last night that she was playing into her mother's hands. When had she ever done so? Why had he suspected her? In the meanwhile the world was "At rest with will And leisure to be fair." The Duchess was not there, suddenly and mercifully laid low by that occasional friend of society--influenza. The Duke, gay and _débonnaire_ in her absence, was beaming on his hostess whom he was to take into dinner, and to whom he was sentimentally linked by a mild flirtation in a past decade, a flirtation so mild that it had no real existence, except in the imaginative remembrance of both. Presently Anne and Stephen were walking in to dinner together. It was a large party, and they sat together at the end of the table. Anne did not wait this time. She began to talk at once. "I am anxious about a friend of mine," she said, "who is, I am afraid, becoming entangled in a far greater difficulty than she is aware. But it is a long story. Do you mind long stories?" "No." Stephen turned towards her, becoming a solid block of attention. "My friend is a Miss Black, a very beautiful woman, whom Mr De Rivaz is dying to paint. You may recollect having seen her where he saw her first, the day after the fire in Lowndes Mansions, in the burnt-out flat of that unfortunate Mrs Brand." "I saw her. I remember her perfectly. I spoke to her about the dangerous state of the passages. I thought her the most beautiful creature, bar none, I had ever seen." Stephen pulled himself up. He knew it was most impolitic to praise one woman to another. They did not like it. It was against the code. He must be more careful, or he should offend her again.