“Thank you for that. I don't know of anything nicer you could say. But the outside world would see neither of our friends. I did not come here to see you.” “No need of telling me that.” “I had a problem--a very difficult one--to solve; and I believed that I might solve it if I came to these rooms. I had quite forgotten you.” Instantly, upon receiving this blunt explanation, he determined that she should never cease to remember him after this night. His vanity was not touched; it was something far more elusive. It was perhaps a recurrence of that inexplicable desire to hurt. Somehow he sensed the flexible steel behind which lay the soul of this baffling girl. He would presently find a chink in the armour with that old Amati. Blows on the head have few surgical comparisons. That which kills one man only temporarily stuns another. One man loses his identity; another escapes with all his faculties and suffers but trifling inconvenience. In Hawksley's case the blow had probably restricted some current of thought, and that which would have flowed normally now shot out obliquely, perversely. It might be that the natural perverseness of his blood, unchecked by the noble influence of Stefani Gregor and liberated by the blow, governed his thoughts in relation to Kitty. The subjugation of women, the old cynical warfare of sex--the dominant business of his rich and idle forbears, the business that had made Boris Karlov a deadly and implacable enemy--became paramount in his disordered brain. She had forgotten him! Very well. He would stir the soul of her, play with it, lift it to the stars and dash it down--if she had a soul. Beautiful, natural, alone. He became all Latin under the pressure of this idea. “I will play for you,” he said, quietly. “Please! And then I'll go home where I belong. I'll be in the living room.” When he returned he found her before a window, staring at the myriad lights. “Sit here,” he said, indicating the divan. “I shall stand and walk about as I play.” Kitty sat down, touching the pillows, reflectively. She thought of the tears she had wept upon them. That sinister and cynical thought! Suddenly she saw light. Her problem would have been none at all if Cutty had said he loved her. There would have been something sublime in making him happy in his twilight. He had loved and lost her mother. To pay him for that! He was right. Those twenty-odd years--his seniority--had mellowed him, filled him with deep and tender understanding. To be with him was restful; the very thought of him now was resting. No matter how much she might love a younger man he would frequently torture her by unconscious egoism; and by the time he had mellowed, the mulled wine would be cold. If only Cutty had said he loved her! “What shall I play?” Kitty raised her eyes in frank astonishment. There was a fiercely proud expression on Hawksley's face. It was not the man, it was the artist who was angry.