A screech from Yorick made her start nervously.

“Cats!” said Yorick.  “Oh the devil—­cats!”

Desire laughed and firmly dislodged Aunt Caroline’s big Maltese cat from its place of vantage on the window-sill.  The laughter dissolved the last of the troublesome lump and she began to feel better.  After all, the book-weariness of which Benis had spoken would probably be a passing phase.  If she allowed herself to go on creating mountains out of molehills she would soon have a whole range upon her hands.

And he had said he needed her!

Mechanically, she began to straighten the desk, restoring the professor’s notes to their proper places.  She was feeling almost sanguine again when her hand fell upon the photograph.

We say “the” photograph because, of all photographs in the world, this one was the one most fatal to Desire’s new content.  She picked it up casually.  Photographs have no proper place amongst notes of research.  Desire, frowning her secretarial frown, lifted the intruder to remove it and, lifting, naturally looked at it.  Having looked, she continued looking.

It was an arresting photograph.  Desire had not seen it before.  That in itself was surprising, since one of Aunt Caroline’s hardest-to-bear social graces was the showing of photographs.  She had quantities of them—­tons, Desire sometimes thought.  They lived in boxes in different parts of the house, and were produced upon most unlikely occasions.  One was never quite safe from them.  Even the spare room had its own box, appropriately covered with chintz to match the curtains.

This photograph, Desire saw at once, would not fit into Aunt Caroline’s boxes.  It was too big.  And it was very modern.  Most of Aunt Caroline’s collection dated from the “background” period of photographic art.  But this one was all person.  And a very charming person too.

Photographs are often deceiving.  But one can usually catch them at it.  Desire perceived at once that this photograph’s nose had been artistically rounded and that its flawlessness of line and texture owed something to retoucher’s lead.  But looking through and behind all this, there was enough—­oh, more than enough!

With instant disfavor, Desire noted the perfect arrangement of the hair, the delicate slope of the shoulder, the lifted chin, the tip of a hidden ear, the slightly mocking, but very alluring, glance of long, fawn-like eyes.

“Another molehill,” thought Desire.  And, virtuously disregarding the instinct leaping in her heart, she turned the fascinating thing face downwards.  Probably fate laughed then.  For written large and in very black ink across the back was the admirably restrained autograph, “Benis, from Mary” . . .

Well, she knew now!

A very different person, this, from the blond Miss Watkins with her hard blue eyes and too, too dewy lips!  Here was a woman of character and charm.  A woman fully armed with all the witchery of sex.  A woman any man might love—­even Benis.