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248 his necessities for money were far greater than they were.

Taking their coffee, they stood about her by the marble basin of the fountain. As the night grew late, as the wine and the incense and her constant presence added heat to their mutual rivalry, the bands of courtesy began to loosen, the instinctive jealousy that was rife among them began to seethe up in covert words and bitter ironies. Erceldoune resented their presence, they resented his; even the bright soft harmony always characteristic of Victor Vane began to show a gleam of constraint and impatience beneath it. Any watcher might have seen that it needed but very slight provocation, a very little more licence, to remove the curb that lay on them, and to let their enmity break into feud, mere strangers though they were to one another. She saw this, but it excited in her no passing agitation even, no thought of difficulty; she was used to see the strongest tempests at riot, and to control them, if she cared to do so, with a glance or a word; often she let them destroy themselves by their own violence. Now she left them and ran her hands over the keys of the grand piano which stood near the fountain, and with hardly a chord of prelude sang a rich Romaic ode,