Bohemia is a wide country, and some of its inhabitants are unsavory. Eighteen months previous, at a moment when a cheque was imperatively necessary, Philippa had allowed one of them to come to her assistance. She had not subsequently treated him very well, and his letters began to threaten her peace of mind. They hinted at danger. It was then that she first met Robert. Hitherto, in spite of her beauty, her relations with men, with one very dubious exception, had not from any material point of view been satisfactory. She had met few--of the right sort. There had been the men at the art schools, of course, mostly penniless, who had raved about her. Philippa had not encouraged them, further than Artemis might have encouraged the worshippers at her shrine. They were practically useless, except as rather shabby burners of incense. Poverty and dependence upon feminine caprice is not the best _milieu_ for making the acquaintance of rich men, added to which there was the undoubted fact that the average man of the world had a tendency to regard Philippa as Mayne had regarded her. He did not care for “that kind of thing.” Accustomed to “smartness” in women, Philippa’s robes made him feel as vaguely uncomfortable as her intense style of conversation abashed and disconcerted him. Certainly it required a man who at least dabbled in art, who at least had some sympathy with the Quartier Latin, to appreciate Philippa. For some time before she and Robert had become friends she had known him by sight. He had been pointed out to her once at the Museum as Fergus Macdonald, the novelist who was becoming well known, and bade fair presently to coin money. Before very long it was obvious that he admired her, and with no definite idea as to the result, yet with a sure instinct that it was the wise course to adopt, Philippa had extended her period of reading. The outcome had been satisfactory, though it was a blow to learn that he was married, and a blow that was not softened by the discovery that she knew his wife. In the early days of their acquaintance, Philippa read much literature which dealt with the possibility of friendship between man and woman. At a later date, when Robert was getting a little out of hand, and her own thoughts began to stray towards putting their sacred friendship upon a different plane, she discovered many treatises upon the doctrine of free love. She began to study the subject, and found it quite engrossing. It seemed to her a very beautiful and noble attitude towards a great aspect of human life. Robert and she often discussed it together earnestly. In the meantime, the Simple Life, which, at the recommendation of Tolstoi, Miles, and others, she had adopted since the defection of Miss Wetherby, had not proved so economical as she had hoped. Besides, she was getting tired of it.