of light, from whose heart came this deep incessant murmur—­could it possibly be the same city through which she had been walking that very day!  From its sleeping body the supreme wistful spirit had emerged in dark loveliness, and was low-flying down there, tempting her.  Barbara turned round, to take in all that amazing prospect, from the black glades of Hyde Park, in front, to the powdery white ghost of a church tower, away to the East.  How marvellous was this city of night!  And as, in presence of that wide darkness of the sea before dawn, her spirit had felt little and timid within her—­so it felt now, in face of this great, brooding, beautiful creature, whom man had made.  She singled out the shapes of the Piccadilly hotels, and beyond them the palaces and towers of Westminster and Whitehall; and everywhere the inextricable loveliness of dim blue forms and sinuous pallid lines of light, under an indigo-dark sky.  Near at hand, she could see plainly the still-lighted windows, the motorcars gliding by far down, even the tiny shapes of people walking; and the thought that each of them meant someone like herself, seemed strange.

Drinking of this wonder-cup, she began to experience a queer intoxication, and lost the sense of being little; rather she had the feeling of power, as in her dream at Monkland.  She too, as well as this great thing below her, seemed to have shed her body, to be emancipated from every barrier-floating deliciously identified with air.  She seemed to be one with the enfranchised spirit of the city, drowned in perception of its beauty.  Then all that feeling went, and left her frowning, shivering, though the wind from the West was warm.  Her whole adventure of coming up here seemed bizarre, ridiculous.  Very stealthily she crept down, and had reached once more the door into ’the picture gallery, when she heard her mother’s voice say in amazement:  “That you, Babs?” And turning, saw her coming from the doorway of the sanctum.

Of a sudden very cool, with all her faculties about her, Barbara smiled, and stood looking at Lady Valleys, who said with hesitation: 

“Come in here, dear, a minute, will you?”

In that room resorted to for comfort, Lord Valleys was standing with his back to the hearth, and an expression on his face that wavered between vexation and decision.  The doubt in Agatha’s mind whether she should tell or no, had been terribly resolved by little Ann, who in a pause of conversation had announced:  “We saw Auntie Babs and Mr. Courtier in Gustard’s, but we didn’t speak to them.”

Upset by the events of the afternoon, Lady Valleys had not shown her usual ‘savoir faire’.  She had told her husband.  A meeting of this sort in a shop celebrated for little save its wedding cakes was in a sense of no importance; but, being disturbed already by the news of Miltoun, it seemed to them both nothing less than sinister, as though the heavens were in league for the demolition of their