“One has to,” she replied with a little sigh.  “Especially if one is a woman, which little mishap comes to some of us, you know.  I wonder if you could find me a chair.”

She was standing with her back to a small sofa capable of holding three, but calculated to accommodate two.  She did not of course see it.  In fact she looked everywhere but toward it, raising her perfectly gloved fingers tentatively for his arm.

“I am tired of standing,” she added.

He turned and indicated the sofa, toward which she immediately advanced.  As she sat down he noted vaguely that she was exquisitely dressed, certainly one of the best dressed women in the room.  Her costume was daring without being startling, being merely black and white largely, boldly contrasted.  He felt indefinitely proud of the dress.  Some instinct in the man’s simple, strong mind told him that it was good for women to be beautiful, but his ignorance of the sex being profound he had no desire to analyze the beauty.  He had no mental reservation with regard to her.  Indeed it would have been hard to find fault with Etta Sydney Bamborough, looking upon her merely as a beautiful woman, exquisitely dressed.  In a cynical age this man was without cynicism.  He did not dream of reflecting that the lovely hair owed half its beauty to the clever handling of a maid, that the perfect dress had been the all-absorbing topic of many of its wearer’s leisure hours.  He was, in fact, young for his years, and what is youth but a happy ignorance?  It is only when we know too much that Gravity marks us for her own.

Mrs. Sydney Bamborough looked up at him with a certain admiration.  This man was like a mountain breeze to one who has breathed nothing but the faded air of drawing-rooms.

She drew in her train with a pretty curve of her gloved wrist.

“You look as if you did not know what it was to be tired; but perhaps you will sit down.  I can make room.”

He accepted with alacrity.

“And now,” she said, “let me hear where you have been.  I have only had time to shake hands with you the last twice that we have met!  You said you had been away.”

“Yes; I have been to Russia.”

Her face was steadily beautiful, composed and ready.

“Ah!  How interesting!  I have been in Petersburg.  I love Russia.”  While she spoke she was actually looking across the room toward the tall Frenchman, her late companion.

“Do you?” answered Paul eagerly.  His face lighted up after the manner of those countenances that belong to men of one idea.  “I am very much interested in Russia.”

“Do you know Petersburg?” she asked rather hurriedly.  “I mean—­society there?”

“No.  I know one or two people in Moscow.”

She nodded, suppressing a quick little sigh which might have been one of relief had her face been less pleasant and smiling.

“Who?” she asked indifferently.  She was interested in the lace of her pocket-handkerchief, of which the scent faintly reached him.  He was a simple person, and the faint odor gave him a distinct pleasure—­a suggested intimacy.