When her friend entered the room, by the light on his face like the brightness of the morning as he caught sight of her, Mary Falconer saw that for Jimmy Bulstrode she was still the one woman in the world. In the relief that this knowledge brought her she half attempted to play with what had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood passed. "That's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with," she said. "He told me dreadful scandals but I think now that I see through them all. The Duchess of Westboro' has been living incognita at The Dials, hasn't she, and her husband at last found her there?" Bulstrode acknowledged that she had read the drama correctly. And Mary Falconer laughed. "Yes, evidently the Duchess has a strong dramatic sense; she's very romantic, isn't she?" And the man absently exclaimed: "Oh, I dare say, I dare say." Then turning to her with unusual vehemence: "Do, for Heaven's sake leave them and everybody. I want to forget them all." He threw up his hand with a sort of supplication. He had seated himself on a tapestried stool close beside the chair she had taken again. Using her Christian name for one of the rare times in his life, he pleaded: "Can't we leave all other people, Mary, can't we?" She looked at him startled and said that their host seemed pretty effectually to have left _them_, rising from her chair with the words, and crossing the room to one of the long windows, drew back the curtain. The cold glass against which she pressed her cheek sent a shock through her, but she stayed for a second close to the pane as if she would implore the newer transport, the stiller transport, of the icy cold to transfuse her veins. The changed temperature had chased away the fog, and the night spread its serene beauty over the park, where the moonlight lay along the terrace like snow. Far down the slope rose the outlines of the bare trees, and the wide landscape shone and shone until it finally was lost in the mists. Bulstrode had followed over and stood by Mary Falconer's side, and the scene before him seemed full of joy, full of gifts, full of largesse. The ornament on the woman's bosom stirred with her breathing, shot a million fine sparkles, and below it the spray of mistletoe rose and fell, rose and fell. He put his hand out and took the spray and fastened it in his buttonhole, saying that the mistletoe was above her head. His voice, one she had never heard, made her unwisely turn to meet his eyes, to shake with the emotion of the adventurer trembling on the edge of the precipice; just to hang over which, and to shudder, he has climbed high. She put her hand out between them, holding him back. "I've had a telegram from my husband. He's very ill. He's in Palm Beach and I'm going over to him next week." [Illustration: "I've had a telegram from my husband"]