“And you refused Lady Luxmore's invitation, knowing that I was to be there, in order to go nowhere in particular?” “The floor of that house is littered with duchesses,” said he. “Its untidiness gets on my nerves.” “That's too flippant, Walter. Why not say at once that you went to Southcliff?” “That's nowhere in particular,” said he. “It's my second home.” “And you come back from it as merry as a young gentleman in a Hauptmann play. You are barely civil.” “My dear Leonora!” he protested. She looked him straight in the eye and shook her head. “Barely civil. What have I done to you?” “You have always shown yourself to be the sweetest of women,” said he. “Then why not treat me as such?” She stood near him on the narrow stair, alluring, reproachful, menacing, yet ready to be submissive. Despite her make-up, her proud beauty shone replendent. If she had been a wise woman, she would have let him answer the challenge. But a woman in love is an idiot; Heaven forbid that she should be otherwise! So is a man, for the matter of that; but he obeys an elementary instinct of self-protection. Woman essentially disobedient (_cf. Rex Mundi vs. Eve_) does not. Hence storms and tempests and cataclysms. Seeing him hesitate, she added jealously: “I believe there is more attraction in the shadow-child at Southcliff than I have been led to suppose.” A man of the world, he ignored the challenge, and turned off the innuendo with a laugh. “Who can say what is shadow and what is substance here below? Kant will tell you that nothing exists save as an idea in our minds.” “I don't seem to exist in yours at all.” “There you wrong me,” he cried. They fenced as they had fenced before; but on her mention of Stellamaris, Herold had closed against her the outer court of his heart into which she had stepped, and, looking at her, had become frozenly aware that the dark Irish eyes, and the raven hair on a stately head, and the curved, promising lips, and the queenly figure, and the genius and rich womanhood of which these were the investiture of flesh, meant to him nothing and less than nothing. The woman read her sentence in his eyes, and abruptly left him, and stood in the wings until her entrance. And Herold, manlike, gave her no thought; for his head was in a whirl, and his heart afire, with a new and consuming knowledge. The splendour of all the Leonora Gurneys, of all the splendid women of the earth, faded into a pale glimmer before the starry eyes of one girl. As a wonder-child, as a thing of sea-foam and sunset cloud, she had crept into his soul and had taken up therein her everlasting habitation. She was the very music of his being, an indissoluble essence of himself. He wondered, as men untouched by love do wonder, why no woman had done more than stir the surface of emotion. Now he knew. He had loved her in her exquisite ideality with a love that was more than love. Now, in her magical transformation, he loved her with love itself.