She studied him for a moment attentively.  His leanness was the leanness of muscular strength and condition, his face was full of vigour and determination.

“You at least have escaped the abnormal,” she remarked.  “I am not quite sure how the entertainments at The Walled House would appeal to you, but if my father should invite you there, I should advise you not to go.”

“Why not?” he asked.

She hesitated for a moment.

“I really don’t know why I should trouble to give you advice,” she said.  “As a matter of fact, I don’t care whether you go or not.  In any case, you are scarcely likely to be asked.”

“I am not sure that I agree with you,” he protested.  “Your father seems to have taken quite a fancy to me.”

“And you?” she murmured.

“Well, I like the way he bought that horse,” Francis admitted.  “And I am beginning to realise that there may be something in the theory which he advanced when he invited me to accompany him here this evening—­that there is a certain piquancy in one’s intercourse with an enemy, which friendship lacks.  There may be complexities in his character which as yet I have not appreciated.”

The curtain had gone up and the last act of the opera had commenced.  She leaned back in her chair.  Without a word or even a gesture, he understood that a curtain had been let down between them.  He obeyed her unspoken wish and relapsed into silence.  Her very absorption, after all, was a hopeful sign.  She would have him believe that she felt nothing, that she was living outside all the passion and sentiment of life.  Yet she was absorbed in the music ....  Sir Timothy came back and seated himself silently.  It was not until the tumult of applause which broke out after the great song of the French ouvrier, that a word passed between them.

“Cavalisti is better,” Sir Timothy commented.  “This man has not the breadth of passion.  At times he is merely peevish.”

She shook her head.

“Cavalisti would be too egotistical for the part,” she said quietly.  “It is difficult.”

Not another word was spoken until the curtain fell.  Francis lingered for a moment over the arrangement of her cloak.  Sir Timothy was already outside, talking to some acquaintances.

“It has been a great pleasure to see you like this unexpectedly,” he said, a little wistfully.

“I cannot imagine why,” she answered, with an undernote of trouble in her tone.  “Remember the advice I gave you before.  No good can come of any friendship between my father and you.”

“There is this much of good in it, at any rate,” he answered, as he held open the door for her.  “It might give me the chance of seeing you sometimes.”

“That is not a matter worth considering,” she replied.

“I find it very much worth considering,” he whispered, losing his head for a moment as they stood close together in the dim light of the box, and a sudden sense of the sweetness of her thrilled his pulses.  “There isn’t anything in the world I want so much as to see you oftener—­to have my chance.”