When I looked at Judith, I was smitten with a great pain.  She had not looked so young, so fresh, so fragilely fair for many months.  She wore a dress of corn-flower blue that deepened the violet of her eyes.  In the mass of flax hued thistle-down that is her hair a blue argus butterfly completed the chord of colour.  There was the faintest tinge of pink in her cheek applied with delicate art.  Her dress seemed made of unsubstantial dream stuff—­I believe they call it chiffon—­and it covered her bosom and arms like the spray of a fairy sea.  She had the air of an impalpable Undine, a creation of sea-foam and sea-flower; an exquisite suggestion of the ethereal which floated beauty, as it were, into her face.  I know little of women, save what these past few grievous months have taught me; but I know that hours of anxious thought and desperate hope lay behind this effect of fragile loveliness.  The wit of woman could not have rendered a woman’s body a greater contrast to that of her rival; and with infinite subtlety she had imbued the contrast with the deeper significance of rare and spiritual things.  I know this was so.  I know it was a challenge, a defiance, an ordeal by combat; and the knowledge hurt me, so that I felt like a Dathan or Abiram who had laid hand on the Ark of the Covenant (for the soul of a woman, by heaven! is a holy thing), and I wished that the earth could open and swallow me up.

We sat down to table in the middle of the great room—­a quiet corner on the balcony away from the band is not to Carlotta’s taste—­like any conventional party of four, and at first talked of indifferent matters.  Conciergerie dinner-parties in the Terror always began with a discussion of the latest cure for megrims, or the most fashionable cut of a panier.  Presently Pasquale who had been talking travel with Judith appealed to me.

“What year was it, Ordeyne, that I came home from Abyssinia?”

“I forget,” said I.  “I only remember you presenting me with that hideous thing hanging in my passage, which you called a dulcimer.”

"Gage d’amour?" smiled Judith.

Pasquale laughed and twirled his swaggering moustache.

“I did get it from a damsel, and that is why I called it a dulcimer, but she didn’t sing of Mount Abora.  I wish I could remember the year.”

“I think it was in 1894,” said Judith quietly.

Pasquale, who had been completely unaware of Judith’s existence until half an hour before, could not repress a stare of polite surprise.

“I believe you are right.  In fact, you are.  But how can you tell?”

“Through the kindness of Sir Marcus,” replied Judith graciously, “you are a very old acquaintance.  I could write you off-hand a nice little obituary notice with all the adventures—­well, I will not say complete—­but with all the dates accurate, I assure you.  I have a head for that sort of thing.”

“Yes,” I cried, desiring to turn the conversation.  “Don’t tell Mrs. Mainwaring anything you wish forgotten.  Facts are her passion.  She writes wonderful articles full of figures that make your head spin, and publishes them in the popular magazines over the signature of Willoughby the statistician.  Allow me to present to you a statistical ghost.”