domino, casting off too the sidereal raiment, had spoken, for the first time, in simple womanhood, and her betraying eyes had told things that they had told to no other man living or dead.  And all that was artificial, all that was fantastic, all that was glamour, was stripped away from Paul in the instant of her self-revelation.  He loved her as man loves woman.  He laughed aloud as his young feet struck the frozen road.  She knew and was not angry.  She, in her wonder, gave him leave to love her.  It was obvious that she loved him to love her.  Dear God!  He could go on loving her like this for the rest of his life.  What more did he want?  To the clean man of nine-and-twenty, sufficient for the day is the beauty thereof.

An inspired youth took his place at the Winwoods’ dinner table that evening.  The elderly, ugly heiress, Miss Durning, concerning whom Miss Winwood had, with gentle malice, twitted him some months before, sat by his side.  He sang her songs of Araby and tales of far Cashmere—­places which in the commonplace way of travel he had never visited.  What really happened in the drawing room between the departure of the ladies and the entrance of the men no one knows.  But before the ladies went to bed Miss Winwood took Paul aside.

“Paul dear,” she said, “you’re never going to marry an old woman for money, are you?”

“Good God, no!  Dearest lady, what do you mean?”

His cry was so sincere that she laughed.

“Nothing,” she said.

“But you must mean something.”  He threw out his hands.

“Are you aware that you’ve been flirting disgracefully with Lizzle Durning?”

“I?” said Paul, clapping a hand to his shirt-front.

“You.”

He smiled his sunny smile into the clear, direct eyes of his dearest lady—­all the more dear because of the premature white of her hair.  “I would flirt to-night with Xantippe, or Kerenhappuch, or Queen Victoria,” said he.

“Why?”

He laughed, and although none of the standing and lingering company had overheard them, he gently led her to the curtained embrasure of the drawing-room window.

“This is perhaps the biggest day of my life.  I’ve not had an opportunity of telling you.  This morning Frank Ayres offered me a seat in Parliament.”

“I’m glad,” said Ursula Winwood; but her eyes hardened.  “And so—­ Lizzie Durning—­”

He took both her elbows in his hands—­only a Fortunate Youth, with his laughing charm, would have dared to grip Ursula Winwood’s elbows and cut her short.  “Dearest lady,” said he, “to-day there are but two women in the world for me.  You are one.  The other—­well—­it isn’t Miss Durning.”

She searched him through and through, “This afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Paul!” She withdrew from his grasp.  In her voice was a touch of reproach.

“Dearest lady,” said he, “I would die rather than marry a rich woman, ugly or beautiful, if I could not bring her something big in return—­something worth living for.”