“Isn’t it hard,” she said, “to distinguish between the real and the unreal? When we go together into the unknown land, we seem to have been friends for ages piled on ages. Then we come back to reality, and I sit down here and we talk about the weather. And that of course is much better. It is, you know, bad form--oh, how weary I am of the phrase--for you to tell me that you’re sorry for me.” Richard leaned against the piano and looked down at her thoughtfully. “Yes--and absurd. Why should I be sorry for you? Suppose, for instance--and of course it is not a possibility--that I should tell my cynical friend Fenton, of whom I want to talk to you sometime, that I had met a woman young, beautiful, wealthy, courted by society, wonderfully accomplished, a musician possessing genius, a soul sensitive to all that is noble and beautiful in life, and that I had expressed to her my commiseration. What would he say?” “Probably,” suggested Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, with a note of recklessness in her voice, “your friend Fenton, if he is a man of the world,--and he probably is, as you call him cynical,--would ask you if this unhappy being was married or unmarried. If you told him she was free”-- “Well?” “Well, he would advise you to check your sympathy and defend your own freedom.” “And if I said that she was married?” “He would say that you must have known her a long time to take such a liberty.” The words were robbed of their harshness by the smile that accompanied them. “Forgive me, please,” he pleaded, bending over her. “How can I help it if words come unbidden to my lips, if I forget that I have known you only a few hours? Won’t you absolve me before I go?” She stood up and gave him her hand. “I have forgiven you,” she said. “It was my fault. You are too sensitive to music.” Then with that charming inconsistency that adds so much to woman’s fascination and to the sorrows of the world, she continued:-- “Have you an engagement, Mr. Stoughton, for Friday night? No? I should so much like to have you join us in our box at the Metropolitan that evening. ‘Sanson et Dalila’ is to be given for the first time in this country, you know. Would you care to hear it?” “It is very good of you,” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “How much pleasure your invitation gives me I dare not tell you--for fear of taking a liberty.” She smiled merrily at his little shaft of sarcasm, and he left her with the roguish light still dancing in her eyes. She turned and walked across the drawing-room and wandered aimlessly into the library. Soon she found herself seated at the piano, but there was no comfort there. For the first time within her recollection her bosom friend, her confidante, the sharer of her joys and sorrows, had turned false. Throwing herself down upon a divan, she buried her head in the pillows and sobbed bitterly. CHAPTER V. “One robbery does not justify another.”