Traill shrugged his shoulders, half conscious of a comparison between his sister and the quiet reserve of this girl beside him.  He had thought her pretty, seeing her at a distance on the night when he had dined with Dolly.  Meeting her the day before, in the dim light of the drawing-room at Sloane Street, he had found her still more attractive; but on this evening, in the glamour of bright lights—­young, fresh, charming as she seemed to him—­his senses were swept by her fascination.

At all times a beautiful woman is wonderful—­the thing of beauty and the joy for ever; the phrase that comes naturally to the mind.  But when, conscious of her own attractions, she lends that beauty to the expression of pleasure which she finds in the company of the man beside her, then, to possibly that man alone, but certainly to him, she is doubly beautiful.  Nature indeed had been generous with Coralie Standish-Roe.  Nature has her moods and her devilish humours.  She was more than amiable when she bestowed her gifts upon Coralie.  You may talk about the value of a noble heart beating in an empty corset, shining out of pinched and tired eyes; but it is a value, unmarketable, where the good things in a woman’s life are given in exchange.  Janet Hallard and her like have learnt the realization of that.  And of the qualities of noble-heartedness, Coralie possessed but very few.  Her disposition was intensely selfish.  She took all the admiration that she could get—­and it was infinitely more than some women dream of—­with a grace of gratitude whose parallel may be found in the schoolboy galloping through one helping of food that he may begin another.  Her hunger for it was insatiable, but she was too young as yet for any such reputation to have fastened itself upon her; too young for the manner which becomes the natural expression of women of this type to have blotted out her undeniable charm of youth.  Youth saved her from Traill’s critical appreciation of women.  Two years later he would have passed her with a momentary lifting of interest which she herself would unconsciously have dispelled at the first touch of acquaintance.  Now, he was not only thrilled, he was interested.  She was a child.  He found her so—­as much a child as Sally had been.  Add her beauty to that—­a beauty unquestionably greater than the simple charm of Sally’s baby features—­and add still again that fallacious sense of social position by which Traill realized that such a girl he could not ask promiscuously out to dinner, could not casually persuade to come to his rooms, and you have, besides the unavoidable comparison between the two in his mind, that subtle difference which a life of ease and a life of labour makes in the position of women to a man’s conception of the sex.

Immediately they stepped outside the theatre into the blaze of light where the attendants were rushing for carriages, and men and women, in a confused mass, jostled each other to fight free of the crowd, Traill’s eyes searched quickly for a sight of Sally.  Mrs. Durlacher also was alert to the possibility of finding her watching their movements.  But they saw no trace of her.