Stefan Florilor resembled a figure in a picture by Guido Reni. A superficial glance would have established him as a singularly handsome, well-built, robust, and attractive young man; a closer regard showed that his good looks owed too much to soft and feminine contours, that the robustness of his frame was only the outward form of strength with all the curves but nothing of the hardness of muscle, and that his eyes flashed not as the mirrors of an inward fire, but with liquid gleams of sensuous impressions caught from outside. He really was extremely like one of Guido Reni's triumphant and ladylike archangels. They talked in French, a language that Florilor spoke without distinction, but with a pothouse fluency--no doubt much as one of Guido Reni's archangels might have picked it up from one of Guido Reni's devils. "What a fatally seductive language it is!" Sylvia exclaimed at last, when she had complimented him as he evidently expected to be complimented upon his ease. "Whenever I hear a tea-table conversation in French I suspect every one of being a poet or a philosopher: whenever I read a French poet I want to ask him if he likes his tea strong or weak." "Your friend is English also?" Florilor inquired. He took advantage of the ethnical turn in the conversation to express his own interest in a problem of nationality. "Yes, she is English." "And no doubt she will be coming down soon?" "She's not coming down. She has a headache." "But perhaps she will be well enough to dine this evening with me?" "No, I don't think she will be well enough," said Sylvia. The young man's face clouded with the disappointment; his features seemed to thicken, so much did their fineness owe to the vitality of sensual anticipation. "Perhaps to-morrow, then?" "No, I don't think she will ever be well enough," Sylvia continued. Then abruptly she put her will to the jump and cleared it breathlessly. "You'll have to make the best of me as a substitute." Afterward when the reality that stood at the back of this scene had died away Sylvia used to laugh at the remembrance of the alarm in Florilor's expression when she made this announcement. She must have made it in a way so utterly different from any solicitation that he had ever known. At the moment she was absurdly positive that she had offered herself to him with as much freedom and as much allurement as his experience was able to conjecture in a woman. When, therefore, he showed by his temper that he had no wish to accept the offer, it never struck her that, even had he felt the least desire, her manner of encouragement would have frozen it. A secondary emotion was one of swift pride in the detachment of her position, which was brought home to her by the complete absence of any chagrin--such as almost every woman would have felt--at the obvious dismay caused by her proposal to substitute herself for her friend. "I'm afraid I must go. I'm busy," he muttered.