She was still looking at the footprints, when the black hangings were pushed aside, and a long, thin, yellow-faced young man appeared. He was wrapped in a black velvet dressing-gown, and wore sandals. “Miss Carfax, I presume?” Eve had risen. “Yes.” “Please sit down. I’m afraid I am rather late this morning.” Any suggestion of subtle and decadent wickedness that the room possessed was diluted by Hugh Massinger’s appearance. There was a droopingness about him, and his face was one of those long yellow faces that fall away in flaccid curves from the forehead to the chin. His nose drooped at the tip, his eyes were melancholy under drooping lids; his chin receded, and lost itself rather fatuously in a length of thin neck. His hair was of the same tint as his smooth, sand-coloured face, where a brownish moustache rolled over a wet mouth. He stooped badly, and his shoulders were narrow. “I called on Miss Champion some days ago. My work requires special ability. Shall I explain?” “Please.” He smiled like an Oriental, and, curling himself on the lounge, brought a black metal cigarette case out of the pocket of his dressing-gown. “Do you mind if I smoke?” “Not in the least.” “Perhaps you will join me?” “I’m afraid I don’t.” She was surprised when he laughed a rather foolish laugh. “That’s quite a phrase, ‘The Women who Don’t!’ I keep a toyshop for phrases.” He puffed his cigarette and began to explain the work to her in a soft and sacramental voice that somehow made her want to laugh. He talked as though he were reading blank-verse or some prose poem that was full of mysterious precocity. But she forgot his sing-song voice in becoming conscious of his eyes. They were moonish and rather muddy, and seemed to be apprizing her, looking her up and down and in and out with peculiar interest. She did not like Hugh Massinger’s eyes. They made her feel that she was being touched. “I am writing a book on mediæval life, especially in regard to its æsthetic values. There is a good deal of research to be done, and old illustrations, illuminations and tapestries to be reproduced. It is to be a big book, quite comprehensive.” Eve soon discovered that Hugh Massinger could not be impersonal in anything that he undertook. The “I” “I” “I” oozed out everywhere. “Miss Champion assured me that you are a fine colourist. Colour is the blood of life. That is why people who are colour mystics can wear black. The true colour, like the blood, is underneath. I noticed, directly I came into the room, that you were wearing black. It convinced me at once that you would be a sympathetic worker. My art requires sympathy.” She smiled disarmingly. “I’m afraid my black is conventional.” “I should say that it is not. I suppose you have worked in the Museum?” “For two or three months.” “Deathly place! How life goes to dust and to museums! I’ll not ask you to go there more than I can help.”