Women are wiser, I think." He took the slender black-gloved hand in his.
"Can I be of the least use to you ?" he asked.
"You have been," she sighed, "if what I said has taught you to know him a little better." * * * * * A week later when the curtain fell on the second act of the new musical comedy, "The Inca," critics preparing to leave questioned each other with considerable curiosity concerning this newcomer, Dorothy Wilming, who had sung so intelligently and made so much out of a subordinate part.
Nobody seemed to know very much about her; several nice-looking young girls and exceedingly respectable young men sent her flowers.

Afterward they gathered at the stage entrance, evidently expecting to meet and congratulate her; but she had slipped away.

And while they hunted high and low, and the last figurante had trotted off under the lamp-lights, Dolly lay in her own dark room, face among the pillows, sobbing her heart out for a dead man who had been kind to her for nothing.
* * * * * And, at the same hour, across an ocean, another woman awoke to take up the ravelled threadings of her life again and, through another day, remember Louis Malcourt and all that he had left undone for kindness' sake.
There were others, too, who were not likely to forget him, particularly those who had received, with some astonishment, a legacy apiece of one small Chinese gilded idol--images all of the _Pa-hsien_ or of _Kwan-Yin_, who rescues souls from hell with the mystic lotus-prayer, "_Om mane padme hum_." But the true Catholicism, which perplexed the eighteen legatees lay in the paradox of the Mohammedan inscriptions across each lotus written in Malcourt's hand: "I direct my face unto Him who hath created.
"Who maketh His messengers with two and three and four pairs of wings.
"And thou shall see them going in procession.
"This is what ye are promised: 'For the last hour will surely come; there is no doubt thereof; but the greater part of men believe it not.' "Thus, facing the stars, I go out among them into darkness.
"Say not for me the Sobhat with the ninety-nine; for the hundredth pearl is the _Iman_--pearl beyond praise, pearl of the five-score names in one, more precious than mercy, more priceless than compassion--Iman! Iman! thy splendid name is Death!" So lingered the living memory of Malcourt among men--a little while--longer among women--then faded as shadows die at dusk when the _mala_ is told for the soul that waits the Rosary of a Thousand Beads.
* * * * * In January the _Ariani_ sailed with her owner aboard; but Hamil was not with him.
In February Constance Palliser wrote Hamil from Palm Beach: "It is too beautiful here and you must come.
"As for Shiela, I do not even pretend to understand her.

I see her every day; to-day I lunched with Mrs.Cardross, and Shiela was there, apparently perfectly well and entirely her former lovely self.

Yet she has never yet spoken of you to me; and, I learn from Mrs.Cardross, never to anybody as far as she knows.
"She seems to be in splendid health; I have seen her swimming, galloping, playing tennis madly.