One evening she came down late for dinner, passed through the swinging doors and sat down at the table reserved for her, which was near these doors. The room was filled with week-end guests. She had an excellent view of this brilliant company. There were handsomely gowned women, rouged and sparkling with jewels; there were more men than were usually to be seen at leisure during this man-grasping war period; and quite a sprinkling of military officers, evidently on leave from Washington. Helen had given her order and sat idly scanning the scene before her, listening to snatches of conversation from the nearer tables. She was barely enough like these other women in her ivory-white, embroidered Canton crêpe not to attract attention. She was pale, as they were painted. Her hair lay in a soft golden coil on her head, where their hair ruffled in a thousand glistening convolutions. Her lips were parted, showing the lapped edge of the two white teeth. The dark lashes of her eyes were more apparent, because of the blueness of these eyes and of the whiteness of her skin. Once she caught the steady, dark gaze of a woman seated directly opposite her, but at a distant table. She lifted her own glance and hurried by this overhead route back to the bunch of violets in the vase on her own table. She could not have told why she did this, probably for the same reason one flinches and draws back from the sudden flash of a brilliant flame. She sat staring at the violets, wondering about this woman, not intelligently, with a sort of amazement which was not pleasant. Never before had she seen such a fury of commanding beauty. She thought she must be tall. She was very dark--olive skin, flushed like a velvet rose; black hair, daringly coiffured and heightened by a Spanish comb; a straight, imperious nose; a fine-lipped mouth, red and cruelly turned to mirth. But the fury of her beauty lay in the smoking black eyes. And the maroon velvet gown she wore seemed somehow to enhance the heat of terrible, searing beauty, as if the body of this woman had been forged, slim and strong, in a furnace and still glowed dangerously and dully. Helen wondered why she had not seen her when she entered the dining room, for now she could almost hear her crackle. Yet she did not look up again in that direction. There was a man at the table with this woman, she knew; but she had been so startled by the native malice of those dark eyes that she had only a blurred impression of his back. Suddenly there was a sound in this place where the confused murmur of many voices made a thousand sounds. It was the rich, rollicking laugh of a man, one high note quickly suppressed.