Jack had pictured himself entering a room full of people, fellow guests, and finding no one, he feared that he had come too soon. If stage stars invited one for midnight, they probably meant one to turn up at half-past twelve, so that, if they sailed in at one o'clock, one would not be annoyed. When the door opened five minutes after his arrival, therefore, he expected to see some theatrical or social "swell." But it was Lyda who appeared--alone. He had never met her off the stage until yesterday, at the door of the Phayre house. Then she had been dressed in black, and thickly veiled. He had guessed her identity from the extreme grace and slimness of her tall figure, and the flame of her red hair glimpsed through embroidered net. In Paris, where she had danced, he had sat too far away to criticise her features, and at the theatre to-night he'd been dazzled by the wonder of her as a swan-woman. Now, as she drifted in with the air of a tired, overworked girl needing rest, and mutely asking for help in securing it, Jack had the thrill of a new revelation. How many sides had this Polish dancer's nature? Was he to have a different sort of thrill each time he met her, always more poignant, more soul-piercing than before? "I am glad to see you," she said. "I thought I should be here first. I hope I've not kept you waiting?" "Not five minutes," Jack assured her. "Good! Will you take off my wrap for me? When I heard you had come I wouldn't wait for my maid." She had unfastened the emerald clasps of a long, oddly shaped cloak of purple velvet lined with clouds of green chiffon over gold. As Jack lifted it from her white shoulders, to his surprise he heard himself exclaim, "I'd imagined you in sables." (What right had he to make a "personal" comment like that?) "So other people have told me," she said. "But I have one peculiarity: I never wear furs. To me it is horrible that women can cover themselves with the skins of lovely creatures murdered for their pleasure: pathetic little faces and feet and tails dangling all over them! No. When I was a child I suffered too much from the cruelty of the strong to the weak to find joy in profiting from it." "By Jove!" exclaimed Jack. "I've thought sometimes of that sort of thing. But I didn't suppose it ever occurred to women, even the tenderest ones I've known." "The women you have known haven't had childhoods like mine," said Lyda. "Yet I hoped you'd not be one to make fun of my feeling. Another thing: I do not eat meat for the same reason. You will see, at supper. But you shall have some, so don't be discouraged!" As she spoke, she smiled, and Jack realized that it was the first time he had seen her smile. That was strange! Or, it would have been strange in another woman. Now he saw that it would be more strange, altogether out of keeping with this character voluntarily opening itself to him, if she laughed or smiled often.