was a nice, honest, handsome girl, entirely unspoilt by the mysterious operations practised upon her.  She related how she had been present when a famous photographer arrived at Miss Wheeler’s flat with his apparatus, and what the famous photographer had said.  The boys laughed.  Miss Wheeler smiled faintly.  “I’m glad we didn’t have to go to that play to-night,” she remarked, quitting photography.  “However, I shall have to go to-morrow night.  And I don’t care for first nights in London, only they will have me go.”  In this last phrase, and in the intonation of it, was the first sign she had given of her American origin; her speech was usually indistinguishable from English English, which language she had in fact carefully acquired years earlier.  George gathered that Lucas’s success in getting Miss Wheeler to dinner was due to the accident of a first night being postponed at the last moment and Miss Wheeler thus finding herself with an empty evening.  He covertly examined her.  Why was the feat of getting Miss Wheeler to dinner enormous?  Why would photographers not leave her alone?  Why would theatrical managers have her accept boxes gratis which they could sell for money?  Why was she asked to join the Viceregal party for the Durbar?  Why was the restaurant agog?  Why was he himself proud and flattered—­yes, proud and flattered—­to be seen at the same table with her?...  She was excessively rich, no doubt; she was reputed to be the niece of a railway man in Indianapolis who was one of the major rivals of Harriman.  She dressed superbly, perhaps too superbly.  But there were innumerable rich and well-dressed women on earth.  After all, she put her gold bag and her gloves down on the table with just the same gesture as other women did; and little big Laurencine had a gold bag too.  She was not witty.  He questioned whether she was essentially kind.  She was not young; her age was an enigma.  She had not a remarkable figure, nor unforgettable hair, nor incendiary eyes.  She seemed too placid and self-centred for love.  If she had loved, it must have been as she sat to photographers or occupied boxes on first nights—­because ‘they’ would have it so.  George was baffled to discover the origin of her prestige.  He had to seek it in her complexion.  Her complexion was indubitably miraculous.  He enjoyed looking at it, though he lacked the experience to know that he was looking at a complexion held by connoisseurs who do naught else but look at complexions to be a complexion unique in Europe.  George, unsophisticated, thought that the unaffected simplicity—­far exceeding self-confidence—­with which she acquiesced in her prestige was perhaps more miraculous than her complexion.  It staggered him.