As the curtain fell Traill proposed supper at a restaurant. They readily agreed. Mrs. Durlacher, in the best of spirits, thanking Providence for the weakness of human nature that had driven Sally to follow Traill to the theatre, still thrilling with the sound of his exclamation in her ears, would have lit the dullest entertainment in the world with the humour of her mood. There was a part for her to play. She played it. All her remarks, bristling with the pointed satires of spiteful criticism, were a foil to the gentle temper of Coralie's conversation. "My God!" said Traill, as they walked down one of the passages to the _foyer_, and he listened to his sister's verdict upon a woman who had gone out before them. "Do you women allow a stitch of respectability to hang on each other's backs?" "She'd want more than a stitch," Mrs. Durlacher replied, "if she's not going to put on more clothes than that." Traill shrugged his shoulders, half conscious of a comparison between his sister and the quiet reserve of this girl beside him. He had thought her pretty, seeing her at a distance on the night when he had dined with Dolly. Meeting her the day before, in the dim light of the drawing-room at Sloane Street, he had found her still more attractive; but on this evening, in the glamour of bright lights--young, fresh, charming as she seemed to him--his senses were swept by her fascination. At all times a beautiful woman is wonderful--the thing of beauty and the joy for ever; the phrase that comes naturally to the mind. But when, conscious of her own attractions, she lends that beauty to the expression of pleasure which she finds in the company of the man beside her, then, to possibly that man alone, but certainly to him, she is doubly beautiful. Nature indeed had been generous with Coralie Standish-Roe. Nature has her moods and her devilish humours. She was more than amiable when she bestowed her gifts upon Coralie. You may talk about the value of a noble heart beating in an empty corset, shining out of pinched and tired eyes; but it is a value, unmarketable, where the good things in a woman's life are given in exchange. Janet Hallard and her like have learnt the realization of that. And of the qualities of noble-heartedness, Coralie possessed but very few. Her disposition was intensely selfish. She took all the admiration that she could get--and it was infinitely more than some women dream of--with a grace of gratitude whose parallel may be found in the schoolboy galloping through one helping of food that he may begin another. Her hunger for it was insatiable, but she was too young as yet for any such reputation to have fastened itself upon her; too young for the manner which becomes the natural expression of women of this type to have blotted out her undeniable charm of youth. Youth saved her from Traill's critical appreciation of women. Two years later he would have passed her with a momentary lifting of interest