as he was, with that strain of refinement induced by the easy circumstances of life, the paid women disgusted him.  Of mere animalism, he had none.  Here in this widest essential, his nature marked its contrast with Traill.  To admit the beast in every man would have been beyond him; simply because the admission of a generalization such as that, would most directly have implied himself.  In Traill’s concession of it, such an admission may easily be read.  And this is the type of man, such as Devenish, most dangerous to society.

If the threadbare hypocrisy of this country of England could but bring itself to don the acknowledgment that the hired woman has her place in the scheme of things, such men as Devenish would find the virtuous woman more closely guarded from their strategies than she is.

When her first song was finished, Sally turned in her chair, laughing frankly to his eyes.

“You needn’t suffer on account of your passion for music by having to criticize,” she said.  “I know it was awful.”

He crossed the room to her side.  “As you like,” he said, bringing his eyes full to hers.  “You can call it anything you please—­but I want some more.”  He picked up the pieces of music that lay on the top of the piano.  “Do you sing that song out of the Persian Garden—­Beside the Shalimar?  I forget the words of it?”

Her fingers ran through the pile of music. “‘Pale Hands I Loved.’  Is that it?” She lifted her face and looked up at him.

“Yes—­yes—­sing that!”

“I’m afraid I haven’t got the music—­can’t play without the music.”

He drew a deep breath.  “That’s a pity,” he said.

“Well—­listen—­I’ll sing this.”

She placed the music before her on the rest, and with one hand on the back of her chair, the other resting on the piano, he bent over her, eyes wandering from the gold of her hair to the parting of her lips as she sang.  It was just such a song as he had asked for; filled with the abandoned sentimentalism of decadent passion—­

   “Lord of my life, than whom none other shareth
    The deep, red, silent wine that fills my soul—­
    Take thou and drain, till not one drop remaineth
    To wet thy lips—­then turn thou down the bowl.

   “Lord of my heart—­this boon I crave—­this only,
    That all my worth may be possessed by thee;
    Make thou my life a chalice, drained, that lonely
    Stands on the altar of Eternity.”

She looked up at him as her fingers wandered to the final chord.  His lips were set in a thin line, and he was breathing quickly.

“Why did you sing that?” he asked.

She blindly shrugged her shoulders.  “I don’t know—­why shouldn’t I?  The music’s a good deal nicer than the words, I think.  Don’t you find the words are rather silly?  They are of most songs, I think.”

“And you call that silly,” he said.  “I suppose it’s a woman’s song—­but, my God! do you know I could sing that to you?”