"Ah!"--and that was all Verisschenzko said, but his thoughts ran: "An infantry officer--not a large enough capture for Harietta to waste time on in a public place--when she is here to advance herself. She danced with him because _she was obliged to_. I must ascertain who this man is." Amaryllis saw that he was preoccupied. They walked on now and round through the shrubbery on the left, and so at last to the house again. Amaryllis could not chance being late. Verisschenzko recovered from his abstraction presently and talked of many things--of the friendship of the soul, and how it can only thrive after there has been in some life a physical passionate love and fusion of the bodies. "I want to think that we have reached this stage, Lady mine. My mission on this plane now is so fierce a one, and the work which I must do is so absorbing, that I must renounce all but transient physical pleasures. But I must keep some radiant star as my lodestone for spiritual delights, and ever since we met and spoke at the Russian Embassy it seems as though step by step links of memory are awakening and comforting me with knowledge of satisfied desire in a former birth, so that now our souls can rise to rarer things. I can even see another in the earthly relation which once was mine, without jealousy. Child, do you feel this too?" "I do not know quite what I feel," and Amaryllis looked down, "but I will try to show you that I am learning to master my emotions, by thinking only of sympathy between our spirits." "It is well--" Then they reached the house and entered the green drawing-room in the Queen Anne Square, by one of the wide open windows, and there Amaryllis held out her two slim hands to Verisschenzko. "Think of me sometimes, even amidst your turmoil," she whispered, "and I shall feel your ambience uplifting my spirit and my will." "Lady of my Soul!" he cried, exalted once more, and he bent as though to kiss her hands, but straightened himself and threw them gently from him. "No! I will resist all temptations! Now you must dress and dine, and dance, and do your duty--and later we will say farewell." Harietta Boleski stamped across her charming chintz chamber in the great tower. She was like an angry wolf in the Zoo, she burst with rage. Verisschenzko had never walked by lakes with her, nor bent over with that air of devotion. "He loves that hateful bit of bread and butter! But I shall crush her yet--and Ferdinand Ardayre will help me!" Then she rang her bell violently for Marie, while she kicked aside Fou-Chow, who had travelled to England as an adjunct to her beauty, concealed in a cloak. His minute body quivered with pain and fear, and he looked up at her reproachfully with his round Chinese idol's eyes, then he hid under a chair, where Marie found him trembling presently and carried him surreptitiously to her room.