“Are we all alone?” she asked, glancing round, struck by the quietude of the flat. “All alone, dear,” he replied, folding her coat over a chair. “I told Mrs. Wilkinson she could go out. I thought it would be good to have it all to ourselves for this first evening--you and I alone in Paradise, darling!” He kissed her, drew her toward the fire. “Warm yourself, my beauty--and pretend it is my heart!” He squeezed her shoulders with broad, strong hands. She shook her head at him in roguish reproof, as she spread her fingers--the new gold ring upon one of them--before the blaze he stirred. “Pretty, pretty!” she rebuked him. “Where has Jim Dacres learned to make love, I should like to know!” “In your eyes, dearest!” he replied, smiling into them. “In your eyes that open right back into a soul that knows immemorial secrets and knows them all as love!” She felt quietly for his hand and held it, without a word, through moments where speech was profanation. Then, with a long breath, feminine curiosity awaking in her, she turned her head and glanced once more around the room. “It’s charming, Jim!” she asserted. “I didn’t know you had so much taste. Where did you get all these beautiful things?” She left the fireside, began to roam about the room, peering into cabinets, picking up one precious object after another, turning over the pages of the books that lay upon the tables. He watched her lithe, graceful movements with admiration. “All over the place,” he answered, negligently. “China, Japan--a few in Italy----” “And this?” she asked, holding up a large crystal ball, supported in a lotus cup upon the back of a carved ivory elephant studded with amber and turquoise and coral, its feet upon an ivory tortoise. “What is this?” “Oh--that! I got that in India. Some old crystal-gazer’s outfit. It’s a few hundred years old--symbolizes the universe, you know. The world rests upon an elephant and the elephant upon a tortoise. I don’t know what the tortoise stands on----” Her face was bright with interest. “And have you ever looked into it?” “Of course not.” His tone was contemptuous. “I don’t go in for that sort of thing. I didn’t buy that--an old Hindoo priest gave it to me--a nice old chap who was good enough to adopt me more or less, years ago now.” “Oh, Jim! Do let us look into it!” Her voice was ecstatic in a sudden excitement. “Do let’s look!” “You won’t see anything,” he emphasized his pessimism in a grudge at the interest she diverted from him to this inanimate object. “It’s all rot, you know--only people with brain-sick imaginations ever see things--or think they see things.” “Oh, but do let’s try!” She came across to him, the crystal in her hand. “Do, there’s a darling!” The appeal of the kiss-pouted lips in the face turned up to him, eyes bright with ingenuous vivacity, was irresistible. He shrugged his shoulders with large good-humour. “All right--but it’s waste of time.”