“Aren’t they all, for that matter, even the worst,” Mrs. Dyott pursued, “supposed some time or other to get out? But if, meanwhile, they’ve been in, however briefly, long enough to adorn a tale—”

“They’ve been in long enough to point a moral. That is to point ours!” With which, and as if a sudden flush of warmer light had moved him, Colonel Voyt got up. The veil of the storm had parted over a great red sunset.

Mrs. Dyott also was on her feet, and they stood before his charming antagonist who, with eyes lowered and a somewhat fixed smile, had not moved. “We’ve spoiled her subject!” the elder lady sighed.

“Well,” said Voyt, “it’s better to spoil an artist’s subject than to spoil his reputation. I mean,” he explained to Maud with his indulgent manner, “his appearance of knowing what he has got hold of, for that, in the last resort, is his happiness.”

She slowly rose at this, facing him with an aspect as handsomely mild as his own. “You can’t spoil my happiness.”

He held her hand an instant as he took leave. “I wish I could add to it!”

III

When he had quitted them and Mrs. Dyott had candidly asked if her friend had found him rude or crude, Maud replied—though not immediately—that she had feared showing only too much that she found him charming. But if Mrs. Dyott took this, it was to weigh the sense. “How could you show it too much?”

“Because I always feel that that’s my only way of showing anything. It’s absurd, if you like,” Mrs. Blessingbourne pursued, “but I never know, in such intense discussions, what strange impression I may give.”

Her companion looked amused. “Was it intense?”

“I was,” Maud frankly confessed.

“Then it’s a pity you were so wrong. Colonel Voyt, you know, is right.” Mrs. Blessingbourne at this gave one of the slow, soft, silent headshakes to which she often resorted and which, mostly accompanied by the light of cheer, had somehow, in spite of the small obstinacy that smiled in them, a special grace. With this grace, for a moment, her friend, looking her up and down, appeared impressed, yet not too much so to take, the next minute, a decision. “Oh, my dear, I’m sorry to differ from anyone so lovely—for you’re awfully beautiful to-night, and your frock’s the very nicest I’ve ever seen you wear. But he’s as right as he can be.”

Maud repeated her motion. “Not so right, at all events, as he thinks he is. Or perhaps I can say,” she went on, after an instant, “that I’m not so wrong. I do know a little what I’m talking about.”

Mrs. Dyott continued to study her. “You are vexed. You naturally don’t like it—such destruction.”

“Destruction?”

“Of your illusion.”

“I have no illusion. If I had, moreover, it wouldn’t be destroyed. I have, on the whole, I think, my little decency.”

Mrs. Dyott stared. “Let us grant it for argument. What, then?”

“Well, I’ve also my little drama.”