She gave a little, reckless laugh.

“Did I?  It’s like the people who think they could act or sing, if they only had the chance.  I choose to think I could feel.  And of course I couldn’t.  We’ve lost the power.  All the old, horrible, splendid things are dead and done with.”

“The old passions, you mean?”

“And the old poems! You’ll never write like that again.”

“God forbid!” said Cliffe, under his breath.  Then as Kitty rose he followed her with his eyes.  “Lady Kitty, you’ve thrown me a challenge that you hardly understand.  Some day I must answer it.”

“Don’t answer it,” said Kitty, hastily.

“Yes, if I can drag the words out,” he said, sombrely.  She met his look in a kind of fascination, excited by the memory of the story which had been told her, by her own audacity in speaking of it, by the presence of the dead passion she divined lying shrouded and ghastly in the mind of the man beside her.  Even the ugly things of which he was accused did but add to the interest of his personality for a nature like hers, greedy of experience, and discontented with the real.

While he on his side was nattered and astonished by her attitude towards him, as Ashe’s wife, she would surely dislike and try to trample on him.  That was what he had expected.

* * * * *

“I hear you are an Archangel, Lady Kitty,” said the Dean, who, having obstinately outstayed all the other guests, had now settled his small person and his thin legs into a chair beside his hostess with a view to five agreeable minutes.  He was the most harmless of social epicures, was the Dean, and he felt that Lady Kitty had defrauded him at lunch in favor of that great, ruffling, Byronic fellow Cliffe, who ought to have better taste than to come lunching with the Ashes.

“Am I?” said Kitty, who had thrown herself into the corner of a sofa, and sat curled up there in an attitude which the Dean thought charming, though it would not, he was aware, “have become Mrs. Winston.

“Well, you know best,” said the Dean.  “But, at any rate, be good and explain to me what is an Archangel.”

“Somebody whom most men and all women dislike,” said Kitty, promptly.

“Yet they seem to be numerous,” remarked the Dean.

“Not at all!” cried Kitty, with an air of offence; “not at all!  If they were numerous they would, of course, be popular.”

“And in fact they are rare—­and detested?  What other characteristics have they?”

“Courage,” said Kitty, looking up.

“Courage to break rules?  I hear they all call one another by their Christian names, and live in one another’s rooms, and borrow one another’s money, and despise conventionalities.  I am sorry you are an Archangel, Lady Kitty.”

“I didn’t admit that I was,” said Kitty, “but if I am, why are you sorry?”

“Because,” said the Dean, smiling, “I thought you were too clever to despise conventionalities.”