“Oh, that’s over long ago and we’ve both forgotten.  I came to-day only to ask the honour of your presence at my first concert.”

An impulse to irritate her—­to provoke her into an expression of her hidden violence—­succeeded quickly the curiosity she had aroused; and he felt again the fiendish delight with which, as a savage small boy, he had prodded the sleeping wild animals in their cages in the park.

“I’m not sure that I can arrange it,” he responded, “I may be off on my honeymoon, you know.”

“Ah, yes,” she nodded while he saw a perceptible flicker of her heavy eyelids, “but when, if I’m not impertinent, does the interesting event take place?  I might be able to postpone my concert,” she concluded jestingly.

He shook his head.  “You can’t do that because I expect it to last forever.”

“One usually does, I believe, but it is easy to miscalculate.  Have you a photograph visible of the lady?”

He shook his head, but with the denial, his glance travelled to a picture of Laura upon his desk; and crossing the room, she took it up and returned with it to the firelight, where she dropped upon her knees in order to study it the more closely.

“Has she money?” was her first enquiry at the end of her examination.

“If she has I am not aware of it,” he retorted angrily.

“Well, I wonder what you see in her,” she remarked, with her attentive gaze still upon the picture, “though she looks as if she’d never let a man go if she once got hold of him.”

Her vulgar insolence worked him into an uncontrollable spasm of anger; and with a smothered oath he wrenched the photograph from her and flung it into the open drawer of his desk.

“She is too sacred to me to be made the subject of your criticism,” he exclaimed.

Whether she was frankly offended or unaffectedly amused he could not tell, but she burst into so musical a laugh that he found himself listening to it with positive pleasure.

“There! there! don’t be foolish—­I was only joking,” she returned, “please don’t think for one minute that it’s worth my while to be jealous of you.”

“I don’t think so,” he replied, with open annoyance, “but I wish you wouldn’t come here.”

She had taken up her fur and stood now wrapping it about her throat, while her eyes were fixed upon him with an expression he found it impossible to read.  Was it anger, seduction, passion or disappointment?  Or was it some deeper feeling than he had ever believed it possible for her face to show?

“It is the last time, I promise you,” she said, “but do you know why I came this afternoon?”

“Why?—­no, and I doubt if you do.”

For a moment she was silent; then he watched the curious physical fascination grow in her smile.

“I came because I had a very vivid dream about you on the boat last night,” she said, “I dreamed of that evening, during the first winter, in my dressing-room after the second act in ‘Faust.’  I thought I had forgotten it, but in my sleep it all came clearly back again—­every minute and—­”