'I am outdistanced by Kato and my cousin; I don't understand politics, or those impersonal friendships.'

'Mademoiselle,' Malteios replied, choosing his words and infusing into them an air of confidence, 'I tell you an open secret, but one to which I would never refer save with a sympathetic listener like yourself, when I tell you that for many years a friendship existed between myself and Madame Kato, political indeed, but not impersonal. Madame Kato,' he said, drawing his chair a little nearer and lowering his voice, 'is not of the impersonal type.'

Eve violently rebelled from his nearness; fastidious, she loathed his goatish smile, his beard, his rosy lips, but she continued to smile to him, a man who held, perhaps, one of Julian's secrets. She was aware of the necessity of obtaining that secret. Of the dishonour towards Julian, sleeping away his hurts and his fatigue in the room above, she was blindly unaware. Love to her was a battle, not a fellowship. She must know! Already her soul, eagerly receptive and bared to the dreaded blow, had adopted the theory of betrayal. In the chaos of her resentments and suspicions, she remembered how Kato had spoken to her in the morning, and without further reflection branded that conversation as a blind. She even felt a passing admiration for the other woman's superior cleverness. She, Eve, had been completely taken in.... So she must contend, not only against the Islands, but against Kato also? Anguish and terror rushed over her. She scarcely knew what she believed or did not believe, only that her mind was one seething and surging tumult of mistrust and all-devouring jealousy. She was on the point of abandoning her temperamentally indirect methods, of stretching out her hands to Malteios, and crying to him for the agonising, the fiercely welcome truth, when he said,—

'Impersonal? Do you, mademoiselle, know anything of your sex? Ah, charming! disturbing, precious, indispensable, even heroic, tant que vous voudrez, but impersonal, no! Man, yes, sometimes. Woman, never. Never.' He took her hand, patted it, kissed the wrist, and murmured, 'Chère enfant, these are not ideas for your pretty head.'

She knew from experience that his preoccupation with such theories, if no more sinister motive, would urge him towards a resumption of the subject, and after a pause full of cogitation he continued,—

'Follow my advice, mademoiselle: never give your heart to a man concerned in other affairs. You may love, both of you, but you will strive in opposite directions. Your cousin, for example.... And yet,' he mused, 'you are a woman to charm the leisure of a man of action. The toy of a conqueror.' He laughed. 'Fortunately, conquerors are rare.' But she knew he hovered round the image of Julian. 'Believe me, leave such men to such women as Kato; they are more truly kin. You—I discover you—are too exorbitant; love would play too absorbing a rôle. You would tolerate no rival, neither a person nor a fact. Your eyes smoulder; I am near the truth?'

'One could steal the man from his affairs,' she said almost inaudibly.

'The only hope,' he replied.

A long silence fell, and his evil benevolence gained on her; on her aroused sensitiveness his unspoken suggestions fell one by one as definitely as the formulated word. He watched her; she trembled, half compelled by his gaze. At length, under the necessity of breaking the silence, she said,—

'Kato is not such a woman; she would resent no obstacle.'