"Let no one imagine," Lady Peggy said, carefully knocking the end of a cigarette upon the table, "that I am going to try to catch the eyes of all you women, and go sailing away with my nose in the air to look at engravings in the drawing-room. You can just get up and go when you like, any or all of you. There are bridge tables laid out for you in the library, music and a hopping girl--I don't call it dancing--in the drawing-room, a pool in the billiard-room, or flirtation in the winter-garden. Coffee and liqueurs will follow you wherever you go. Take your choice, good people. For myself, the Duke is telling me stories of Cairo. J'y suis, j'y reste. I'm only thankful no one else can hear them!" The party at the great round table dispersed slowly by two and threes. Wilhelmina and Deyes strolled into the winter-garden. Deyes lit a cigarette and stood with his hands behind him. Wilhelmina was leaning against the back of a chair. She was too excited to sit down. "Please!" she begged. Deyes threw his cigarette away. His face seemed to harden and soften at the same time. His mouth was suddenly firm, but his eyes glowed. All the boredom was gone from his manner and expression. "Wilhelmina," he said, "I have wanted to marry you ever since I saw you in the Café de Paris with that atrocious blackguard who has caused you so much suffering. You may remember that I have hinted as much to you before!" She was startled--visibly disturbed. "You know very well," she said, "that you are speaking of impossible things!" "Things that were impossible, Wilhelmina," he said. "Suppose I take Jean le Roi off your hands? Suppose I promise to send him back to his own country like a rat to his hole? Suppose I promise that your marriage shall be annulled without a line in the newspapers, without a single vestige of publicity?" "You cannot do it," she murmured eagerly. "You want your freedom, then?" he asked. "Yes! I want my freedom," she answered. "I have a right to it, haven't I?" "And I," he said slowly, "want you!" There was a short pause. Through the palms came the faint wailing of a violin, the crash of pianoforte chords, the clear soft notes of a singer. Wilhelmina felt her eyes fill with tears. She was overwrought, and there were new things, things that were strange to her, in the worn, lined face of the man who was bending towards her. "Wilhelmina," he said softly, "life, our life, does its best to strangle the emotions. One feels that one does best with a pulse which has forgotten how to quicken, and a heart which beats to the will of its owner. But the most hardened of us come to grief sometimes. I am afraid that I have come--very much to grief!" "I am sorry," she said quietly. He drew away and his face became like marble. "You mean--that it isn't any use?" he asked hoarsely. She looked at him, and he did not press for words. "Is it--the missioner?" he asked.