When I looked at Judith, I was smitten with a great pain. She had not looked so young, so fresh, so fragilely fair for many months. She wore a dress of corn-flower blue that deepened the violet of her eyes. In the mass of flax hued thistle-down that is her hair a blue argus butterfly completed the chord of colour. There was the faintest tinge of pink in her cheek applied with delicate art. Her dress seemed made of unsubstantial dream stuff--I believe they call it chiffon--and it covered her bosom and arms like the spray of a fairy sea. She had the air of an impalpable Undine, a creation of sea-foam and sea-flower; an exquisite suggestion of the ethereal which floated beauty, as it were, into her face. I know little of women, save what these past few grievous months have taught me; but I know that hours of anxious thought and desperate hope lay behind this effect of fragile loveliness. The wit of woman could not have rendered a woman’s body a greater contrast to that of her rival; and with infinite subtlety she had imbued the contrast with the deeper significance of rare and spiritual things. I know this was so. I know it was a challenge, a defiance, an ordeal by combat; and the knowledge hurt me, so that I felt like a Dathan or Abiram who had laid hand on the Ark of the Covenant (for the soul of a woman, by heaven! is a holy thing), and I wished that the earth could open and swallow me up. We sat down to table in the middle of the great room--a quiet corner on the balcony away from the band is not to Carlotta’s taste--like any conventional party of four, and at first talked of indifferent matters. Conciergerie dinner-parties in the Terror always began with a discussion of the latest cure for megrims, or the most fashionable cut of a panier. Presently Pasquale who had been talking travel with Judith appealed to me. “What year was it, Ordeyne, that I came home from Abyssinia?” “I forget,” said I. “I only remember you presenting me with that hideous thing hanging in my passage, which you called a dulcimer.” _“Gage d’amour?”_ smiled Judith. Pasquale laughed and twirled his swaggering moustache. “I did get it from a damsel, and that is why I called it a dulcimer, but she didn’t sing of Mount Abora. I wish I could remember the year.” “I think it was in 1894,” said Judith quietly. Pasquale, who had been completely unaware of Judith’s existence until half an hour before, could not repress a stare of polite surprise. “I believe you are right. In fact, you are. But how can you tell?” “Through the kindness of Sir Marcus,” replied Judith graciously, “you are a very old acquaintance. I could write you off-hand a nice little obituary notice with all the adventures--well, I will not say complete--but with all the dates accurate, I assure you. I have a head for that sort of thing.”