“I loved it,” said Dinah.

“Was Eustace kind to you?”

“Oh, most kind.”  Dinah spoke with candid enthusiasm.

“I am glad of that,” Isabel’s voice held a note of satisfaction.  “But I should think everyone is kind to you, child,” she said, with her faint, glimmering smile.  “How beautiful you are!”

“Me!” Dinah opened her eyes in genuine astonishment.  “Oh you wouldn’t think so if you saw me in my ordinary dress,” she said.  “I’m nothing at all to look at really.  It’s just a case of ’Fine feathers,’—­nothing else.”

“My dear,” Isabel said, “I am not looking at your dress.  I seldom notice outer things.  I am looking through your eyes into your soul.  It is that that makes you beautiful.  I think it is the loveliest thing that I have ever seen.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t say so if you knew me!” cried Dinah, conscience-stricken.  “I have horrid thoughts often—­very often.”

The dark, watching eyes still smiled in their far-off way.  “I should like to know you, dear child,” Isabel said.  “You have helped me—­you could help me in a way that probably you will never understand.  Won’t you sit down?  I will put my letters away, and we will talk.”

She began to collect the litter before her, laying the letters together one by one with reverent care.

“Can I help?” asked Dinah timidly.

But she shook her head.  “No, child, your hands must not touch them.  They are the ashes of my life.”

An open box stood on the table.  She drew it to her, and laid the letters within it.  Then she rose, and drew her guest to a lounge.

“We will sit here,” she said.  “Stumpy, why don’t you smoke?  Ah, the music has stopped at last.  It has been racking me all the evening.  Yes, you love it, of course.  That is natural.  I loved it once.  It is always sweet to those who dance.  But to those who sit out—­those who sit out—­” Her voice sank, and she said no more.

Dinah’s hand slipped softly into hers.  “I like sitting out too sometimes,” she said.  “At least I like it now.”

Isabel’s eyes were upon her again.  They looked at her with a kind of incredulous wonder.  After a moment she sighed.

“You would not like it for long, child.  I am a prisoner.  I sit in chains while the world goes by.  They are all hurrying forward so eager to get on.  But there is never any going on for me.  I sit and watch—­and watch.”

“Surely we must all go forward somehow,” said Dinah shyly.

“Surely,” said Scott.

But Isabel only shook her head with dreary conviction.  “Not the prisoners,” she said.  “They die by the wayside.”

There fell a brief silence, then impetuously Dinah spoke, urged by the fulness of her heart.  “I think we all feel like that sometimes.  I know at home it’s just like being in a cage.  Nothing ever happens worth mentioning.  And then quite suddenly the door is opened and out we come.  That’s partly why I am enjoying everything so much,” she explained.  “But it won’t be a bit nice going back.”