“Wasn’t there—anyone special?” asked Janet shyly.

Mary looked up, smiling.

“Do you mean, was I engaged to be married? No.”

“No, not quite that. Weren’t you—wasn’t anyone in love with you?”

“Evidently not.” There was a note of bitterness in Mary’s voice.

Janet wanted to know more, but Mary seemed to be absorbed all at once in her letter.

II.

JANET’S questioning had awakened memories that were not dead, but lulled by time to rest. Mary Nugent indulged in reminiscence that night as she lay in bed. She thought of the frivolous, expensive career that had been hers for years, not with disgust, but with an ineffable longing. There had been many friends, many love-stricken young men; delightful days at Lord’s, or Hurlingham, or Henley; enchanted evenings in the murky vastness of Covent Garden; bright nights spent in dancing, with haunting music in the air, the buzz of laughing voices, and the scent of hot-house flowers. There had been the sweet companionship of Peter Devril, too, growing almost imperceptibly into something sweeter still. She thought, smiling cynically, of his fascination, of his wit, and of his good looks.

She remembered the hurt she had felt when he did not come to see her after the smash. Until lately she had kept the formal note he had written her locked in her writing-case. Six months ago she had discovered it there, and had burned it without one tear for the tragic past.

From Peter her thoughts flew to Bill Corkran, who had gone to America, a year before the smash, to get rich quick. He had been the dearest of all her friends; Mary wondered whether he would have held aloof after her father’s suicide if he had been in England. He had been very fond of her; she knew that. Before he left for America he had said certain words to her that had implied that she was his reason for wanting to make money. She did not know where he was or what he was doing. He had probably returned to England, and certainly he must have heard of her changed circumstances.

Mary was a typist in a firm of steel manufacturers. She had but one friend in the place, Malcolm, who was of her class and who wanted to be an artist. He was twenty-six—a year older than Mary, but in every essential five years younger. He made no pretence of being in love with her, but occasionally they went out together, when he would pour his hopes and longings into her sympathetic ear.

III.

FOR months the Chinese shawl remained hidden in a drawer. Sometimes Mary would take it out (when Janet was absent) and wistfully finger the silken folds. It exercised a strange fascination over her; she liked to look at it and drape herself in it.

In January Malcolm came to her in jubilant excitement waving a pink and a yellow ticket in his hand. He explained that he had wangled them out of a chap he knew who knew the fellow who was running the ball at the Corinthian.