Was she a madwoman? There was nothing indeed of the disorder of madness about her. From the great white hat, loaded with long white ostrich feathers, which crowned her golden hair, down to the long white gloves which hung in wrinkles on her arms, and the graceful draperies which half-hid, half-revealed, her sinuous and slender figure, the stranger showed every sign of that studied elegance and calculated attractiveness which comes only from taste, care and the long experience of a characteristic but keen feminine intellect. Audrey, having of late had to study dress as a fine art, acknowledged herself in the presence of a past mistress of it. No. The lady in the white draperies was not mad, wild as were her eyes, and weirdly alarming as was her mocking laughter. There was a moment of dead, uncanny silence, when, her laughter having died away on her lips, the stranger, still grasping the dark curtain as if for support, and leaning forward to fix the gaze of her terrible dark eyes on Audrey, stood like a tigress ready to spring, panting, struggling for the breath that came only in painful gasps, preparing herself for an encounter which Audrey felt would be a terrible one. Audrey looked round her fearfully, wondering whether she could escape the trying ordeal with which she knew herself to be threatened. This woman had, she knew, come to see her, come with some accusation, unguessed at but evidently serious, ready on her lips as it was already burning in her eyes. There was a door nearly opposite to where Audrey stood by the couch; but it was shut, and there were dress stands and lounges between it and her. She had a feeling that, if she were to attempt to fly, the tiger-like stranger would spring at her, tear her to pieces with those long, lean, white-gloved hands, that looked claw-like as they moved nervously with every breath she drew. And Audrey was encumbered with the weight of a magnificent black train, glittering with paillettes and voluminous in its folds, which she put on when she arrived at the showrooms in the morning, and exchanged for a quiet little tailor-made gown to return at night to her two modest rooms on the top floor over a small chemist’s shop in a street off Oxford Street. This handsome black gown increased the effect of a strong contrast between her and her weird visitor. The lady in white was tall, thin; from golden hair and whitened face to sinuous figure, a work of finished art. Audrey was in the first freshness of her striking natural beauty, easy and graceful of carriage, well developed of figure, with golden hair that lay in natural rings on her forehead, and in a twisted coil, untidy and loose, on the top of her head. The contrast was between natural and artificial loveliness, and the glaring, panting stranger seemed to appreciate this fact. Long as the time seemed, it was in truth but a few moments that they both stood silently watching each other, neither ready to utter the first word.