Mr. Muir was perplexed also, and watched her with furtive admiration.  “If she cares for Graydon’s neglect she’s a superb actress,” he thought.  “Great Scott! what an idiot he is, that he cannot see the difference between this grand woman and yonder white-faced speculator!  She actually quickens the blood in my veins to-night when she fixes her great black eyes on me.”

Graydon felt her power, but believed that there was nothing in it gentle or conciliatory toward himself.  Probably her mood resulted from a proud consciousness of her beauty and the triumphs that awaited her.  She had been young and gay heretofore with the other young people, but now that a number of mature men, like Arnault, had appeared upon the scene, she proposed to make a different impression.  The embodiment of her ideal might be among them.  “At any rate,” he concluded, “she has the skill to make me feel that I have little place in either her imaginings or hopes, and that for all she cares I may capture Miss Wildmere as soon as I can.  Both of us probably are so far beneath her ideals of womanhood and manhood that she can never be friendly to one and is fast losing her interest in the other.  She has already virtually said, ’Our relations are accidental, and if you marry Stella Wildmere you need not hope that I shall accept her with open arms as inseparable from one of my best friends.’  ‘Best friend,’ indeed!  Even that amount of regard was a lingering sentiment of the past.  Now that we have met again she realizes that we have grown to be comparative strangers, and that our tastes and interests lie apart.”

Thus day after day he had some new and perturbed theory as to Madge, in which pique, infused with cynical philosophy and utter misapprehension, led to widely varying conclusions.  Ardent and impatient lover of another woman as he was, one thing remained true—­he could neither forget nor placidly ignore the girl who had ceased to be his sister, and who yet was not very successful in playing the part of a young lady friend.

When the dancing began, the storm was approaching its culmination.  More vivid than the light from the chandeliers, the electric flashes dazzled startled eyes with increasing frequency.  Miss Wildmere at first tried to show cool indifference in the spirit of bravado, and maintained her place upon the floor with Mr. Arnault and a few others.  She soon succumbed, with visible agitation, as a thunderous peal echoed along the sky.  Madge danced on with Graydon as if nothing had occurred.  He only felt that her form grew a little more tense, and saw that her eyes glowed with suppressed excitement.

“Are you not afraid?” he asked, as soon as his voice could be heard.  “See, the ladies are scattering or huddling together, while many look as if the world were coming to an end.”

“The world is coming to an end to some every day,” she replied.

“That remark is as tragic as it is trite, Madge.  What could have suggested it?”