surely she could be found?"

Nora rested her head upon her fingers. She seemed to be watching
intently the dancing flames. Her broad, womanly forehead was troubled,
her soft brown eyes pensive.

"He is fifty years old," she said. "It is rather an anomalous age. At
fifty a man's taste is almost hypercritical and his attraction to my sex
is on the wane. No, the problem isn't so easy."

Dartrey had finished tea and was feeling for his cigarette case.

"I rather fancied, Nora, that he was attracted by you."

"Well, he isn't, then," she replied, with a smile.

"He was rather by way of thinking that he was, the other night, but that
was simply because he was in a curiously unsettled state and he felt
that I was sympathetic."

"You are a very clever woman, Nora," he said, looking across at her.
"You could make him care for you if you chose."

"Is that to be my sacrifice to the cause?" she asked. "Am I to give my
soul to its wrong keeper, that our party may flourish?"

"You don't like Tallente?"

"I like him immensely," she contradicted vigorously. "If I weren't
hopelessly in love with some one else, I could find it perfectly easy to