To fulfil the requirements of the ideal, those two souls should have leapt together to light, as two chemical elements dormant apart, will, on impact, forsake their independent properties and mingle riotously in the creation of a newer element. But Talham had done all the leaping. The girl had been but the passive agent, a screen to reflect his brilliancy--Talham was a dazzling searchlight that played on Yvonne Yale. She, herself, produced no increase in the power of illumination. It was absurd to say that she was cold. All women are cold--just as all men are liars. In a dark room a diamond is undistinguishable from half a brick. People who, when groping in the gloom of ignorance, in a vain search for the furnace, which they felt must burn within the heart of the girl, not infrequently came up against the refrigerating plant, and retired in disorder, composing wicked little epigrams. She stood for a long time on the balcony--then returned to the room. The servant, who had admitted her, still waited resentfully. Her name was Martha Ann, and she had in her colourless composition no romance. Her hour for rising was seven, and she had risen at five. That was all. “Do you want me, miss?” she asked, with offensive patience. Yvonne shook her head, and the girl went off. “I don’t suppose I shall get to sleep now,” she said bitterly. “A nice time in the morning for a gentleman to call.” She said many other things, but was careful to wait until her voice was only represented to the girl below by a succession of incomprehensible sounds, the tenor of which might be grasped from the fact that each sentence ended on a high note. When Martha came down at the conventional hour she found her young mistress fully dressed, moreover, dressed for the street. “I am going to Covent Garden to buy some flowers, Martha,” said Yvonne. Martha tightened her lips and said nothing until she heard the door close behind the girl. “What a house!” said Martha, and raised her eyes to the ceiling. It was a glorious morning. The air was sweet and clean; the flood of golden sunlight which bathed the green spaces of the city squares and made ornate avenues of the long orderly streets, was a veritable elixir of life. There was a spring even in the hard, asphalt pavement that morning, and the girl found herself singing quietly to herself as she walked along. Covent Garden Market was no great distance from the hotel which housed Talham. An hour later she was standing in the Strand, her arms filled with dewy blooms, looking with a thoughtful eye upon the great block of buildings which constituted the caravanserai. Breakfast was seldom a pleasant meal in Upper Curzon Street. The urbanity, the graciousness, and the Foreign Office manner of Mrs. Yale were never on view at so early an hour. The great hostess of eleven p.m. became the vinegary housekeeper of nine a.m.