Merciful banalities! They gave him time to consider the change in her, a change which was to him sufficiently striking almost to have trapped him into an expressed surprise, and this change was so subtle that he wondered that it should yet be so apparent. It was not a matter of outward appearance, that remained the same in effect. It was a mental change so animating and vital that Cresswell felt all former estimates of her crumble. Had she always been so, and had he never really seen her until now? Had time and absence in some way cleared his obscured vision? He felt a momentary sense of confusion, a brief mental giddiness, and then he pulled himself together. The first impression was the correct one. She had changed, and thereby had gained, gained tremendously in poise. But there was no time now in which to analyze impressions. "So this is the magic parlor where all the ugly women are transformed into beauties." He looked about him as if he had not thought to glance at her surroundings before. "The presence of mere man here seems rather profane, do you not think so? Ah, well, my stay is brief. You have proved, haven't you, that it is not an impossibility after all, to paint the lily and gild refined gold?" "So few women have any taste," she said carelessly. "And oh, their houses! You should see them when I go over their hideous houses like a devouring flame and ruthlessly order out all their dreadful junk. And the most awful objects are always the most precious in their eyes. I feel so sorry for them. I have always a guilty sense of being a naughty boy robbing a bird's nest, and the poor mother birds stand around and flap their wings and hop and shriek. It's very mournful, but they needn't have me if they don't want me." He laughed. "And Maud? Is she, too, well and happy?" Dita lifted her hands and eyes. "That is a very tame way of describing her. Her gowns are dreams this spring, she is considered almost a beauty; people, you see, are gradually forgetting that she was ever 'that plain Maud Carmine who plays nicely,' and Wallace Martin and herself are engaged to be married." A faint, amused smile crept around her mouth at this announcement. Hepworth looked up with sudden interest. "Indeed! Well, that might have been expected, I dare say, but will it not rather seriously interfere with the business?" "No," she shook her head. "No, I think not, Maud has no intention of quitting. Wallace's plays are more or less problematical and Maud has invested a good deal of her money in this. It is really paying remarkably well, you know." "Dita," his voice was low, and he could not conceal the chagrin, the touch of pain in it. "Why have you never touched a cent of your own money, since my departure? I only learned a few days ago that you had not. I can not begin to tell you how it made me feel. It not only distressed but deeply wounded me."