Gradually it had faded with the fading of a memory; but to-night the colors of that memory revived, the thought startled into a more vivid existence. In the press and hurry of life, not less in Oxford than in other modern towns, the Stewarts and Fletchers did not meet so often and intimately as to make inevitable the discovery of Mildred Stewart's dual personality by her cousins. They said she had developed moods; but with the conservatism of relations, saw nothing in her that they had not seen in her nursery days. Ian and Milly walked home from dinner, according to Oxford custom, but a Durham man walked with them, talking over a College question with Ian, and they did not find themselves alone until they were within the wainscoted walls of the old house. Milly had looked so pale all the evening that Ian expected her to go to bed at once; but she followed him into the study, where the lamp was shedding its circle of light on the heaped books and papers of his writing-table. Making some perfunctory remarks which she barely answered, he sat down to work at an address which he was to deliver at the meeting of a learned society in London. Milly threw off her white shawl and seated herself on the old, high-backed sofa. Her dress was of some gauzy material of indeterminate tone, interwoven with gold tinsel, and a scarf of gauze embroidered with gold disguised what had seemed to her an over-liberal display of dazzling shoulders. Ian, absorbed in his work, hardly noticed his wife sitting in the penumbra, chin on hand, staring before her into nothingness, like some Cassandra of the hearth, who listens to the inevitable approaching footsteps of a tragic destiny. At last she said: "I've got something awful to tell you." Ian startled, dropped his pen and swung himself around in his pivot chair. "What about? Tony?"--for it was to this diminutive that Mildred had reduced the flowing syllables of Antonio. "No, your cousin, Maxwell Davison." Now, Ian liked his cousin well enough, but by no means as well as he liked Tony. "About Max!" he exclaimed, relieved. "What's happened to him?" "Nothing--but oh, Ian! I--hate even to speak of such a thing--" "Never mind. Just tell me what it is." "I was on the river with him this afternoon, and he--he made love to me." The lines of Ian's face suddenly hardened. "Did he?" he returned, significantly, playing with a paper-knife. Then, after a pause: "I'm awfully sorry, Milly. I'd no idea he was such a cad." "He--he wanted me to run away with him." Ian's face became of an almost inhuman severity. "I shall let Maxwell Davison know my opinion of him," he said. "But it's worse--it's even more horrible than that. He was expecting me. I--_I_ of course knew nothing about it; I only knew about the garden-party at Lady Margaret. But he said I'd promised to come; he said all kinds of shocking, horrid things about my having dressed myself up for him--"