Diana was wearing perfectly plain white satin. A Medici collar, embroidered with pearls, rose at the back of her shapely head. She wore violets at her bosom, and a dainty wreath of violets in her hair. Her gown in front was cut square and low, and embroidered with pearls. On the whiteness of her skin, below the beautiful firm neck, sparkled a brilliant diamond star. David hated to see it there; he could hardly have explained why. It rose and fell lightly, with her breathing. When she laughed, it scintillated in the light of the wax candles. It fascinated David—the sparkling star, on the soft flesh. He looked at it, and looked away; but again it drew his unwilling eyes.

He tried to master his aversion. Why should not Miss Rivers wear a diamond star? Why should he, David, presume to dislike to see a star so worn?

Before they reached the second course, Diana said to the butler: "Send Marie to me."

In a few moments her French maid, in simple black attire, with softly braided hair, stood at her elbow. Diana, still talking gaily to David, lifted both arms, unclasped the thin gold chain from about her neck, and handed the pendant to her maid.

"Serrez-moi ça," she said, carelessly.

Then she turned her clear eyes on David. "You prefer it in the sky," she said. "I quite agree with you. A woman's flesh savours too much of the world and the devil, to be a resting-place for stars. It can have no possible connection with ideals."

She spoke so bitterly, that David's tender heart rose up in arms.

"True, I prefer it in the sky," he said, "and I prefer it not of diamonds. But I do not like to hear you speak so of—of your body. It seems to me too perfectly beautiful to be thus relegated to a lower sphere; not because it is not flesh; but because, though flesh, it clothes a radiant soul. The mortal body is but the garment of the immortal soul. The soul, in mounting, lifts the body with it."

"I do not agree with you," said Diana. "I loathe bodies; my own, no less than other people's. And how little we know of our souls. I am afraid I shall shock you, Cousin David, but a favourite theory of mine is: that only a certain number of people have any souls at all. I have always maintained that the heathen have no souls."

David's deep eyes gleamed.