She chose to show that she, too, was beautiful, and she knew that Beatrice had as yet hardly seen her face as they passed through the gloomy corridors.  It was an instinct of vanity, and yet, for her purpose, it was the right one.  The effect was sudden and unexpected, and Beatrice looked at her almost fixedly, in undisguised admiration.

“Young then!” she exclaimed.  “You are young now!”

“Less young than I was then,” Unorna answered with a little sigh, followed instantly by a smile.

“I am five and twenty,” said Beatrice, woman enough to try and force a confession from her new acquaintance.

“Are you?  I would not have thought it—­we are nearly of an age—­quite, perhaps, for I am not yet twenty-six.  But then, it is not the years—­” She stopped suddenly.

Beatrice wondered whether Unorna were married or not.  Considering the age she admitted and her extreme beauty it seemed probable that she must be.  It occurred to her that the acquaintance had been made without any presentation, and that neither knew the other’s name.

“Since I am a little the younger,” she said, “I should tell you who I am.”

Unorna made a slight movement.  She was on the point of saying that she knew already—­and too well.

“I am Beatrice Varanger.”

“I am Unorna.”  She could not help a sort of cold defiance that sounded in her tone as she pronounced the only name she could call hers.

“Unorna?” Beatrice repeated, courteously enough, but with an air of surprise.

“Yes—­that is all.  It seems strange to you?  They called me so because I was born in February, in the month we call Unor.  Indeed it is strange, and so is my story—­though it would have little interest for you.”

“Forgive me, you are wrong, It would interest me immensely—­if you would tell me a little of it; but I am such a stranger to you——­”

“I do not feel as though you are that,” Unorna answered with a very gentle smile.

“You are very kind to say so,” said Beatrice quietly.

Unorna was perfectly well aware that it must seem strange, to say the least of it, that she should tell Beatrice the wild story of her life, when they had as yet exchanged barely a hundred words.  But she cared little what Beatrice thought, provided that she could interest her.  She had a distinct intention in making the time slip by unnoticed, until it should be late.

She related her history, so far as it was known to herself, simply and graphically, substantially as it has been already set forth, but with an abundance of anecdote and comment which enhanced the interest and at the same time extended its limits, interspersing her monologues with remarks which called for an answer and which served as tests of her companion’s attention.  She hinted but lightly at her possession of unusual power over animals, and spoke not at all of the influence she could exert upon people.  Beatrice listened eagerly.  She could have told, on her part, that for years her own life had been dull and empty, and that it was long since she had talked with any one who had so roused her interest.