After this unsatisfactory and, to, a certain extent, baffling visit, Herold went back to London with a heartache, which induced an unaccustomed moodiness. At the theatre that night, Miss Leonora Gurney took him to task. Now, Miss Gurney (Mrs. Hetherington in private life; she had divorced the disreputable Hetherington years ago, and had not remarried) was a very important and captivating person. She was a woman of genius, a favourite of the London public, a figure of society, in management on her own account, wherein she showed shrewd business ability, and very much in love with Walter Herold, wherein she showed much of the weakness of Eve. This season Herold was her leading man. To say that Herold had wrapped himself up in his Joseph's garment (not the one of many colours, but the other one equally famous) during all his stage career would be mendacious folly. Many a ball had come to him at the bound, and he had returned it gaily. He had laughed an honest way through innumerable love-affairs--things of the moment, things of the fancy, things of no importance whatsoever. Many maidens, and some matrons, had wept for him, but none bitterly. He had established a reputation for lack of seriousness in matters of the heart. His bright, blue eyes would flash at you, and his low, musical voice would murmur no matter what, even were it the Lord's Prayer backward, and you caught your breath, and lost your head, and were perfectly ready to say if he asked you, and sometimes even if he did n't ask you: “Take me, I am yours.” But whatever he did, he never rose to the passionate height, or sank to the unromantic depth, of the situation. Which things were a mystery.