CHAPTER III.
FRIARS' HOLM With a grinding of brakes the taxi slowed up and came to a standstill at Friars' Holm, the quaint old Queen Anne house which Magda had acquired in north London.
Once within the high wall enclosing the old-world garden in which it stood, it was easy enough to imagine oneself a hundred miles from town.
Fir and cedar sentinelled the house, and in the centre of the garden there was a lawn of wonderful old turf, hedged round in summer by a riot of roses so that it gleamed like a great square emerald set in a jewelled frame.
Magda entered the house and, crossing the cheerfully lit hall, threw open the door of a room whence issued the sound of someone--obviously a first-rate musician--playing the piano.
As she opened the door the twilight, shot by quivering spears of light from the fire's dancing flames, seemed to rush out at her, bearing with it the mournful, heart-shaking music of some Russian melody.

Magda uttered a soft, half-amused exclamation of impatience and switched on the lights.
"All in the dark, Davilof ?" she asked in a practical tone of voice calculated to disintegrate any possible fabric of romance woven of firelight and fifths.
The flood of electric light revealed a large, lofty room, devoid of furniture except for a few comfortable chairs grouped together at one end of it, and for a magnificent grand piano at the other.

The room appeared doubly large by reason of the fact that the whole of one wall was taken up by four immense panels of looking-glass, cleverly fitted together so that in effect the entire wall was composed of a single enormous mirror.

It was in front of this mirror that Magda practised.
The remaining three walls were hung with priceless old tapestry woven of sombre green and greys.
As she entered the room a man rose quickly from the piano and came forward to meet her.

There was a kind of repressed eagerness in the action, as though he had been waiting with impatience for her coming.
He was a striking-looking man, tall, and built with the slender-limbed grace of a foreigner.