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vision of Miss Antill in her successful dress.
    Eustace Cleugh had, in fact, performed most nobly almost all that had been expected of him that night. He had appeared to listen attentively to all those statistics with which the graziers had provided him. He had lent a sympathetic ear to graziers' wives, condemned to use up their lives on Australian soil, removed from all those material advantages which their sensibility, not to say spirituality, required. He had danced, how he had danced with the daughters. At least, his body had accepted the dictatorship of music, and his face had not let him down. But now he had gone upstairs, into the study of his Cousin Norbert Hare, to nurse his numbness, and to look through an album of engravings of German churches in the Gothic style.
    Here his Cousin Eleanor found him.
    "Eustace," she exclaimed, "I cannot imagine how you have allowed yourself to overlook Miss Antill. Such an exquisite dancer, and a lovely girl. I cannot rest until I see you lead her out."
    And she took him by the wrist, guiding _, as she was convinced.
    Eustace Cleugh was far too well brought up to wrench himself free of gentle compulsion. All he said was, "Yes, Miss Antill is very lovely. "
    So Mary Hare watched their cousin brought downstairs. She watched him move out across the treacherous floor. That he was brought _, and that he no more than moved _, was something which perhaps only Mary noticed, but she, of course, spent so much of her time observing timid behaviour: of birds, for instance. Now here was her cousin, Eustace Cleugh, netted by the music and Miss Antill. How the mirrors in the dress flashed and reflected. Eustace did not struggle, but revolved most correctly, holding his partner; Mary alone saw how he was held. Almost the colour of nougat, his face asked the expected questions: about theatrical entertainments, the races and the weather. In the short space of his visit, he had grown surprisingly well informed on matters of local importance.
    But Miss Antill seemed to remain unconvinced. As they revolved and revolved, the phrases into which she bit could have tasted peculiar. She could not quite believe in some thing _, some failure--was it her own? Or could the bird have died before the kill? They continued, however, to revolve. As Miss Antill clutched her partner's expensive cloth and the travesty of experience, she could have been flickering, although it was attributed by almost her entire audience to the clash between light and mirrors. Such splendour as hers did not encounter uncertainties.
    Then there was a pause in the music, and Mr Cleugh did behave very oddly, everybody agreed. He simply excused himself, wiped his face with a horribly white handkerchief, and walked away. It was in the end far less humiliating for Miss Antill, in spite of the slight she had suffered, for practically the whole population of the bachelors' quarters rushed upon her, to say nothing of several susceptible solicitors and elderly, unsuspected graziers.
    Eustace Cleugh disappeared in the direction of the terrace. One or two ladies just noticed in the confusion of movement that dotty Mary went, or rushed, rather, after him, dropping wilted flowers as she ran, but everybody was too distracted by the scene they had just witnessed to envisage further developments of an incomprehensible nature. Besides, they had been taught firmly to suppress, like wind in company, the rise of unreason in their minds.
    Eustace was on the terrace, Mary found, not quite in darkness, for the lights of the house cast a certain glow, tarnished, but comforting.
    "Oh," she began, "I shall go away if you would rather."
    Though she would have hated to be sent.
    "No," he said. "There is no reason to go away. In this glass house. One is fully exposed, everywhere."
    "Is it different, then, in other houses?"
    He laughed. He sounded almost natural.
    "No," he replied. "I suppose not."
    "How you hated it," she said. "The dance with Miss Antill. I am