Lillian waved her fan once or twice, then closed it softly.  “Love is the motive,” she said.

Now the balancing—­the adjusting of impression and inspirationis, of all processes in life, the most deli. cately fine.  The simple sound of the word “love” coming at that precise juncture changed the whole current of Loder’s thought.  It fell like a seed; and like a seed in ultra-productive soil, it bore fruit with amazing rapidity.

The word itself was small and the manner in which it was spoken trivial, but Loder’s mind was attracted and held by it.  The last time it had met his ears his environment had been vastly different; and this echo of it in an uncongenial atmosphere stung him to resentment.  The vision of Eve, the thought of Eve, became suddenly dominant.

“Love?” he repeated, coldly.  “So love is the motive?”

“Yes.”  This time it was Kaine who responded in his methodical, contented voice.  “The motive of the play is love, as Lillian says.  And when was love ever serious in a three-act comedy—­on or off the stage?” He leaned forward in his seat, screwed in his eye-glass, and lazily scanned the stalls.

The orchestra was playing a Hungarian dance—­its erratic harmonies and wild alternations of expression falling abruptly across the pinks and blues, the gilding and lights of the pretty, conventional theatre.  Something in the suggestion of unfitness appealed to Loder.  It was the force of the real as opposed to the ideal.  With a new expression on his face, he turned again to Kaine.

“And how does it work?” he said.  “This treatment that you find so—­French?”

His voice as well as his expression had changed.  He still spoke quietly, but he spoke with interest.  He was no longer conscious of his vague and uneasiness; a fresh chord had been struck in his mind, and his curiosity had responded to it.  For the first time it occurred to him that love—­the dangerous, mysterious garden whose paths had so suddenly stretched out before his own feet—­was a pleasure-ground that possessed many doors—­and an infinite number of keys.  He was stirred by the desire to peer through another entrance than his own, to see the secret, alluring byways from another stand-point.  He waited with interest for the answer to his question.

For a second or two Kaine continued to survey the house; then his eye-glass dropped from his eye and he turned round.

“To understand the thing,” he said, pleasantly, “you must have read the book.  Have you read the book?”

“No, Mr. Kaine,” Mary Esseltyn interrupted, “Mr. Chilcote hasn’t read the book.”

Lillian laughed.  “Outline the story for him, Lennie,” she said.  “I love to see other people taking pains.”

Kaine glanced at her admiringly.  “Well, to begin with,” he said, amiably, “two men, an artist and a millionaire, exchange lives.  See?”

“You may presume that he does see, Lennie.”