Then an expression of sorrowful youth stole into Lady Holme’s eyes, changed her mouth to softness and her cheeks to curving innocence. She leaned a little way from the piano towards her audience and sang, looking up into vacancy as if her world were hidden there. The song had the clear melancholy and the passion of a Northern night. It brought the stars out within that room and set purple distances before the eyes. Water swayed in it, but languidly, as water sways at night in calm weather, when the black spars of ships at anchor in sheltered harbours are motionless as fingers of skeletons pointing towards the moon. Mysterious lights lay round a silent shore. And in the wide air, on the wide waters, one woman was singing to herself of a sorrow that was deep as the grave, and that no one upon the earth knew of save she who sang. The song was very short. It had only two little verses. When it was over, Sir Donald, who had been watching the singer, returned to the sofa, where Robin Pierce was sitting with his eyes shut and, again striking his fingers against the palms of his hands, said: “I have heard that song at night on the Neva, and yet I never heard it before.” People began getting up to go away. It was past eleven o’clock. Sir Donald and Robin Pierce stood together, saying good-bye to Lady Holme. As she held out her hand to the former, she said: “Oh, Sir Donald, you know Russia, don’t you?” “I do.” “Then I want you to tell me the name of that stuff they carry down the Neva in boats--the stuff that has such a horrible smell. That song always reminds me of it, and Fritz can’t remember the name.” “Nor can I,” said Sir Donald, rather abruptly. “Good-night, Lady Holme.” He walked out of the room, followed by Robin. CHAPTER II LORD HOLME’S house was in Cadogan Square. When Sir Donald had put on his coat in the hall he turned to Robin Pierce and said: “Which way do you go?” “To Half Moon Street,” said Robin. “We might walk, if you like. I am going the same way. “Certainly.” They set out slowly. It was early in the year. Showers of rain had fallen during the day. The night was warm, and the damp earth in the Square garden steamed as if it were oppressed and were breathing wearily. The sky was dark and cloudy, and the air was impregnated with a scent to which many things had contributed, each yielding a fragment of the odour peculiar to it. Rain, smoke, various trees and plants, the wet paint on a railing, the damp straw laid before the house of an invalid, the hothouse flowers carried by a woman in a passing carriage--these and other things were represented in the heavy atmosphere which was full of the sensation of life. Sir Donald expanded his nostrils. “London, London!” he said. “I should know it if I were blind.” “Yes. The London smell is not to be confused with the smell of any other place. You have been back a good while, I believe?” “Three years. I am laid on the London shelf now.”