“Well, Honora,” he asked, “how do you like—­the whirl of fashion?”

She turned to him with one of those rapid and bewildering movements that sometimes characterized her, and put her arms on his shoulders.

“What a dear old stay-at-home you were, Howard,” she said.  “I wonder what would have happened to you if I hadn’t rescued you in the nick of time!  Own up that you like—­a little variety in life.”

Being a man, he qualified his approval.

“I didn’t have a bad time,” he admitted.  “I had a talk with Brent after dinner, and I think I’ve got him interested in a little scheme.  It’s a strange thing that Sid Dallam was never able to do any business with him.  If I can put this through, coming to Quicksands will have been worth while.”  He paused a moment, and added:  “Brent seems to have taken quite a shine to you, Honora.”

She dropped her arms, and going over to her dressing table, unclasped a pin on the front of her gown.

“I imagine,” she answered, in an indifferent tone, “that he acts so with every new woman he meets.”

Howard remained for a while in the doorway, seemingly about to speak.  Then he turned on his heel, and she heard him go into his own room.

Far into the night she lay awake, the various incidents of the evening, like magic lantern views, thrown with bewildering rapidity on the screen of her mind.  At last she was launched into life, and the days of her isolation gone by forever.  She was in the centre of things.  And yet —­well, nothing could be perfect.  Perhaps she demanded too much.  Once or twice, in the intimate and somewhat uproarious badinage that had been tossed back and forth in the drawing-room after dinner, her delicacy had been offended:  an air of revelry had prevailed, enhanced by the arrival of whiskey-and-soda on a tray.  And at the time she had been caught up by an excitement in the grip of which she still found herself.  She had been aware, as she tried to talk to Warren Trowbridge, of Trixton Brent’s glance, and of a certain hostility from Mrs. Chandos that caused her now to grow warm with a kind of shame when she thought of it.  But she could not deny that this man had for her a fascination.  There was in him an insolent sense of power, of scarcely veiled contempt for the company in which he found himself.  And she asked herself, in this mood of introspection, whether a little of his contempt for Lily Dallam’s guests had not been communicated from him to her.

When she had risen to leave, he had followed her into the entry.  She recalled him vividly as he had stood before her then, a cigar in one hand and a lighted match in the other, his eyes fixed upon her with a singularly disquieting look that was tinged, however, with amusement.  “I’m coming to see you,” he announced.

“Do be careful,” she had cried, “you’ll burn yourself!”

“That,” he answered, tossing away the match, “is to be expected.”