He looked at her more than once himself, her classic beauty, or the classic effect she made it produce, appealing to his æsthetic sense as beauty in any form always did. He wondered a little that it should so have lost its once irresistible appeal to his senses, wondered again if he could not still have loved her well enough to live with had Ora never entered his life. Certainly he was very proud of her, and her conversation as well as her personality interested him. He respected her profoundly for what she had achieved, giving her full credit for the revolution in appearance, manners, and speech, in spite of her exceptional opportunities. Then he forgot her as his thoughts wandered to Ora, whom he saw sitting alone in her warm shadowy room, in which he had come to feel so much at home. As he always went to her when he was tired, after a day filled with excitement or hard physical labour, he experienced only peace and content in her nearness; but when away, as tonight, and with the music of Thaïs singing into his keen responsive nerves, he was filled with an inexpressible longing. He was roused by a faint exclamation from Ida. She was leaning forward. A moment later a man, whom he had never seen before and who looked like an Englishman of distinction, silently entered the box. Ida left her chair, and gave him both her hands in greeting, then went with him out into the passageway where their conversation would not interfere with her guests’ enjoyment of the music. Gregory felt very much like any other husband at that moment. He was conscious of no sting of jealousy, or stab of doubt, but he did not like it. He also received a distinct impression that his rights of proprietorship were menaced. Moreover, he was so invaded by mere curiosity that it was with difficulty he refrained from gratifying it at once. But, although he belonged to the type of Western man who would shoot the filcher of his woman without an instant’s consideration, he was the last man in the world to make a fool of himself. Ida tried his patience but a few moments. As soon as the curtain fell she re-entered the box and presented the stranger as Lord John Mowbray, who had arrived by the evening train and sought the opera house as a relief from the hotel. She did not add that he had telephoned at once to her house and followed her as quickly as he could change his clothes. The husband was the last to be made known to the distinguished stranger, and in spite of Mowbray’s ability to look vacuous, and Gregory’s to look like a graven image, neither could repress a spark under his lowered lids. Mowbray reared his haughty crest at once and turned away. Like many young Englishman he blushed easily, and he was by no means the first man to feel uncomfortable under the eyes of Gregory Compton. He felt the colour rising to his white forehead, and was not sorry to present his splendid back and length of limb to that searching gaze.