“What a cynical view!”

“Is it not a true one?”

“Perhaps—­in some cases—­in mine certainly; only I have generally managed to obtain what I wanted.”

“Then it may be a new experience for you to find there was one thing which was out of your reach.”

He bent forward eagerly and asked, with a catch in his breath: 

“And that was——?”

“The soul of a woman—­shall we say—­that something which no brute force can touch.”

The fencing bout was over, the foils were laid aside, and grim earnest was in Michael’s voice now—­modulated by civilization into that tone which does not carry beyond one’s neighbor at a dinner party.

“Your soul—­Sabine—­that is the only thing which interests me, and I was never able to touch your soul?  That is not true, as you know—­How dare you say it to me.  There was one moment——­”

“Hush,” she whispered, growing very white.  “You must not—­you shall not speak to me so.  You had no right to come here.  No right to talk to me at all—­it is traitorous—­we are both traitors to Lord Fordyce, who is a noble gentleman above suspecting us of such wiles.”

And at that moment, through a gap in the flowers of the long table, they both saw Henry’s gray eyes fixed upon them with a rather questioning surprise—­and then Mrs. Forster gave the signal to the ladies, and Sabine with the others swept from the room, leaving Michael quivering with pain and emotion.

As for Sabine, she was trembling from head to foot.

During dinner, Moravia had had an interesting conversation with Henry.  They had spoken of all sorts of things and eventually, toward the end of it, of Sabine.

“She is the strangest character, Lord Fordyce,” Moravia said.  “She is more like a boy than a girl in some ways.  She absolutely rules everyone.  When we were children, she and all the others used to call me the mother in our games, but it was really Sabine who settled everything.  She was always the brigand captain.  She got us into all the mischief of clandestine feasts and other rule breaking—­and all the Sisters simply adored her, and the Mother Superior, too, and they used to let her off, no matter what she did, with not half our punishments.  She was the wildest madcap you ever saw.”

Henry was, of course, deeply interested.

“She is sufficiently grave and dignified now!” he responded in admiration, his worshiping eyes turned in Sabine’s direction; but it was only when she moved in a certain way that he could see her, through the flowers.  Michael he saw plainly all the time, and perceived that he was not boring himself.

“Her character, then, would seem to have been rather like my friend’s, Michael Arranstoun’s,” he remarked.  “They have both such an astonishing, penetrating vitality, one would almost know when either of them was in the room even if one could not see them.”

“He is awfully good-looking and attractive, your friend,” Moravia returned.  “I have never seen such bold, devil-may-care blue eyes.  I suppose women adore him; I personally have got over my interest in that sort of man.  I much prefer courteous and more diffident creatures.”