"The Higher Education of Man," she rejoined, then darted down a side street, laughing. "I am afraid you are too intimate with that lady," Lord Groome observed severely, "You must not allow yourself to be bitten by her revolutionary ideas. She is a dangerous person." "Not 'revo'--but evolutionary," Evadne answered, smiling. "Yes. Mrs. Malcomson has taught me a great deal. She is a very remarkable person. The world will hear more of her, I am sure, and be all the better for her passage through it. But here we are. Thank you for accompanying me. What a hot afternoon! Good-bye!" She shook hands with him, then opened the door and walked in, leaving him outside. He felt the dismissal somewhat summary, but shrugged his shoulders philosophically and walked on, reflecting, _à propos_ of Mrs. Malcomson: "That's just the way with women! When they begin to have ideas they spread them everywhere, and all the other women in the neighbourhood catch them, and are spoiled by them." Evadne's spirits had risen in the open air, but the moment she found herself alone a reaction set in. The hall was dark and cool, and she stopped there, thinking--Oh, the dissatisfaction of it all! There were no servants about, and the house seemed curiously still. She heard the ripple of running water from an unseen fountain somewhere, and the intermittent murmur of voices in a room close by, but there is a silence that broods above such sounds, and this it was that Evadne felt. Close to where she stood was a divan with some tall foliage plants behind it, and she sat down there, and, leaning forward with her arms resting on her knees, began listlessly to trace out the pattern of the pavement with the point of her parasol. She had no notion why she was lingering there alone, when she had come out for the sole purpose of not being alone; but the will to do anything else had suddenly forsaken her. Her mind, however, had become curiously active all at once, in a jerky, disconnected sort of way. "Lord Groome--thank Heaven for having got rid of him so easily! I was afraid it would be more difficult. Poor foolish old man! Yes. It is ridiculous that the destinies of nations should hang on the size of one man's liver. Where did I hear that now? It seems as old--old--as the iniquity itself. Subjects get into the air--I heard someone say that too, by-the-way--here--soon after I came out. Who was it? Oh--the dance on the _Abomination_. Mrs. Malcomson and Mr. Price. _He_ said subjects were diseases which got into the air; _she_ said they were more like perfumes. Now, _I_ should not have compared them with either--" The door of the room where the voices had been murmuring intermittently opened at that moment, and Edith came out, followed by Menteith. It was a vision which Evadne never forgot.