“Mr. Tavernake,” she begged, looking at him full out of those wonderful blue eyes, “please do me a great favor.”

“What is it?” he asked with clumsy ungraciousness.

“Come and see me, every now and then, and let me know how my sister is.  Perhaps you may be able to suggest some way in which I can help her.”

Tavernake considered the question for a moment.  He was angry with himself for the unaccountable sense of pleasure which her suggestion had given him.

“I am not quite sure,” he said, “whether I had better come.  Beatrice seemed quite anxious that I should not talk about her to you at all.  She did not like my coming to-day.”

“You seem to know a great deal about my sister,” Elizabeth declared reflectively.  “You call her by her Christian name and you appear to see her frequently.  Perhaps, even, you are fond of her.”

Tavernake met his questioner’s inquiring gaze blankly.  He was almost indignant.

“Fond of her!” he exclaimed.  “I have never been fond of any one in my life, or anything—­except my work,” he added.

She looked at him a little bewildered at first.

“Oh, you strange person!” she cried, her lips breaking into a delightful smile.  “Don’t you know that you haven’t begun to live at all yet?  You don’t even know anything about life, and at the back of it all you have capacity.  Yes,” she went on, “I think that you have the capacity for living.”

Her hand fell upon his with a little gesture which was half a caress.  He looked around him as though seeking for escape.  He was on his feet now and he clutched at his hat.

“I must go,” he insisted almost roughly.

“Am I keeping you?” she asked innocently.  “Well, you shall go as soon as you please, only you must promise me one thing.  You must come back, say within a week, and let me know how my sister is.  I am not half so brutal as you think.  I really am anxious about her.  Please!”

“I will promise that,” he answered.

“Wait one moment, then,” she begged, turning to the letters by her side.  “There is just something I want to ask you.  Don’t be impatient—­it is entirely a matter of business.”

All the time he was acutely conscious of that restless desire to get out of the room.  The woman’s white arms, from which the sleeves of her blue gown had fallen back, were stretched towards him as she lazily turned over her pile of correspondence.  They were very beautiful arms and Tavernake, although he had had no experience, was dimly aware of the fact.  Her eyes, too, seemed always to be trying to reach some part of him which was dead, or as yet unborn.  He could feel her striving to get there, beating against the walls of his indifference.  Why should a woman wear blue stockings because she had a blue gown, he wondered idly.  She was not like Beatrice, this alluring, beautiful woman, who lay there talking to him in a manner whose meaning came to him only in strange, bewildering flashes.  He could be with Beatrice and feel the truth of what he had once told her—­that her sex was a thing which need not even be taken into account between them.  With this woman it was different; he felt that she wished it to be different.