Eve changed her position.  “She was very artistic,” she said, tentatively.  “Don’t you think the gold gown was beautiful with her pale-colored hair?”

Loder felt surprised.  He was convinced that Eve disliked the other and he was not sufficiently versed in women to understand her praise.  “I thought—­” he began.  Then he wisely stopped.  “I didn’t see the gown,” he substituted.

Eve looked out of the window.  “How unappreciative men are!” she said.  But her tone was strangely free from censure.

After this there was silence until Grosvenor Square was reached.  Having left the carriage and passed into the house, Eve paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs to give an order to Crapham, who was still in attendance in the hall; and again Loder had an opportunity of studying her.  As he looked, a sharp comparison rose to his mind.

“A fairy princess!” he had heard the red-haired man say as Lillian Astrupp came into view along the Bramfells’ corridor, and the simile had seemed particularly apt.  With her grace, her delicacy, her subtle attraction, she might well be the outcome of imagination.  But with Eve it was different.  She also was graceful and attractive—­but it was grace and attraction of a different order.  One was beautiful with the beauty of the white rose that springs from the hot-house and withers at the first touch of cold; the other with the beauty of the wild rose on the cliffs above the sea, that keeps its petals fine and transparent in face of salt spray and wet mist.  Eve, too, had her realm, but it was the realm of real things.  A great confidence, a feeling that here one might rely even if all other faiths were shaken, touched him suddenly.  For a moment he stood irresolute, watching her mount the stairs with her easy, assured step.  Then a determination came to him.  Fate favored him to-night; he was in luck tonight.  He would put his fortune to one more test.  He swung across the hall and ran up the stairs.

His face was keen with interest as he reached her side.  The hard outline of his features and the hard grayness of his eyes were softened as when he had paused to talk with Lakely.  Action was the breath of his life, and his face changed under it as another’s might change under the influence of stirring music or good wine.

Eve saw the look and again the uneasy expression of surprise crossed her eyes.  She paused, her hand resting on the banister.

Loder looked at her directly.  “Will you come into the study —­as you came that other night?  There’s something I want to say.”  He spoke quietly.  He felt master of himself and of her.

She hesitated, glanced at him, and then glanced away.

“Will you come?” he said again.  And as he said it his eyes rested on the sweep of her thick eyelashes, the curve of the black hair.

At last her lashes lifted, and the perplexity and doubt in her blue eyes stirred him.  Without waiting for her answer, he leaned forward.