"Thanks! Couldn't possibly. I abhor tea," she said curtly, and immediately resumed the interrupted conversation. Dempster turned, faintly smiling. He was accustomed to the rudeness of the modern society woman, and it had no power to hurt him. On the contrary, he congratulated himself on having escaped an unwelcome task. He turned aside with a sigh of relief, and even as he turned, the ordered beating of his heart seemed for a moment to cease, and leave his being suspended in space. Cut sharply in twain, as by the sweep of a scythe, the old life fell from him and the new life began, for there, but a couple of yards away, stood the Dream Woman, her eyes gazing steadily into his! She was a tall, slim woman, no longer in her first youth, but her face had a strange, arresting beauty. Hair and eyes were dark, and there was something curiously un-English in the modelling of the features, something subtly suggestive of a fiercer, more primal race. So might a woman have looked whose far-off ancestor had been an Indian brave, bequeathing to future generations some spark of his own wild vigour. The lips were scarlet, a thin, curved line in the pallor of her face; her eyes were fringed with black, straight lashes. She wore a gown of cloudy black, and there came to Rupert, with a cramping of the heart, the swift conviction that she was unhappy. She was looking at him, half frowning, half smiling, having, it would appear, overheard his invitation and its rebuff; but as his face came more clearly into view a look of bewilderment overspread her features. She started, and involuntarily bent her head in salutation. The next moment Rupert was by her side, and her hand lay in his. He had extended his own, and hers had come to meet it without hesitation. For a long moment they looked at one another in silence, then he spoke in commonplace greeting: "Good afternoon. Can I get _you_ some tea?" She shook her head, but at the same time took a slow step forward, which had the effect of turning the refusal into an invitation. "I'm so tired; I don't want anything, but a seat; away from that band!" "Come this way. There's a summer-house at the end of the shrubbery that is probably empty. No one knows of it but the intimates. You can rest there quietly."