the corners, and eastward one brilliant planet sailed majestically up from a sea-green belt of sky. They could see a dim red light moving round the cape below them, on the unseen ocean. It was the mail steamer feeling her way along the rocky treacherous coast-line. The strum of throbbing strings and the muffled beat of the dancers’ feet on the floor had a fantastic unreal effect in the distance, and might have been the echo of a witches’ sabbath rather than the simple gaiety of a country-house, breaking in on the sacred hour of daybreak.
“There is something I want to speak to you about,” she began suddenly, after they had sat silent for some moments. She rested her elbow on one knee and leaned forward, much in the attitude which Michael Angelo has immortalized in the tomb of the Medici, but which is not generally adopted at evening parties. “You will think me mad I dare say, but I do want to have it out with you.”
“Let us have it out, by all means.”
He smiled, contemplating her from an artist’s point of view and finding the “impression” most satisfactory.
“I have had a nasty knock to-night,” she went on, speaking slowly and not without some natural dignity, “though the words were strong.”
